I 

I 



# LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.! 



||l'«P-'^ fw'#t I'o I 



I UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.^ 



POPULAM BOOKS 

BY 

•'brick pomeroy.* 



L — SKNSa 
n.— NONSENSK. 
m. — SATCIIDAY SIQHTS. 

IV. — GOLD-DUST. 

V. — BRICK DUST. 

VI. — HOME HARMONIES. 



'tte Tcrsatility of genius exhibited by this anthor has won 

bim % world-wifie reputation aa a facetious and a Btn^lg 

writer. One moment replete with the most 

touching pathos, and the next full of 

fni, frolic, and sarcasm." 



AS imbUahed nnlform with this volume, at $1.50, and sent bj 
free qf postage, on receipt of price, 



W. CARLETON & CO., Publlshen^ 
New York. 




//oW / UY Afe Dow/ To j^liTy:-:p. ss9 



HOME HARMONIES. 



A COLLECTION OF 



SATURDAY NIGHT REFLECTIONS FOR 
HOjVIE CORNERS. 



MAKK M. POMEROY, 

•% [" BRICK POMEROY,"] 

AUTHOB OF 
"sense," "NONSEMSE," "our SATURDAY NIGHTS,' 

"gold dust," "brick dust," etc., etc. 



■'^ aV '^^ ^'^'V'^-^ 



NEW YORK: 

G. W. Carleto7i &" Co., P2tblishers. 

london: s. low & co. 

mdccclxxvi. 






Copyright by 
G. W. CARLETON & CO., 
1876. 



John F. Trow & Son, 

Printeks and Stkrkotypers, 

205-213 Kast i2//i St., 

NEW YORK. 



®o tljost n)l)o arc goolr to ttjemecbea, 

AND 

To every person who has a load to carry, and whose soul 
is sometimes very sad ; whose way is at times over rough 
places with little to encourage, these chapters of heart- 
whispered sunshine are dedicated. They are planks of a 
bridge I am trying to build, over which those who have souls 
can walk safely, as I have walked, from darkness to light, 
from sorrow to serenity, from mental unrest to that strength 
and comfort which awaits every brave, patient, honest man, 
woman and child in the Land of the Leal, where all is like 
the morning of endless life, and where there are no weary 
days or despondent Saturday Nights. By the lamp that 
lights the way as above I have walked to contentment, and 
now would hold the light for others. 

With good wishes to all. 

M. M, POMEKOT. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. — Home, Happiness, and Heaven 13 

II.—" Darling, I Love You " 24 

III.— Leaving the Old Rubbish 40 

IV. — "Now the Seed-time — then the Harvest 51 

v.— How the Builders Build 60 

VI.— The Homeless Child 67 

VII.— Wanting too Much 73 

VIII.— The Wants of the Released Convict 81 

IX.— Having a Good Time 93 

X.— What a Selfish Mother Did 103 

XI.— Why not Try to be a Man ? 113 

XII.— A True Philosopher 124 

XIII. — How the Poor Boy came to be Rich 131 

XIV. — Seeking the Sunshine 141 

XV.— The Orphan Girl and Her Friends 154 

XVL— Baby and Her Kisses 163 

XVII. — Helping the Industrious 174 

XVIU.— The Children and their Trees 183 



Yiii Contents. 

CHAPTER PAGR 

XIX,— The Drunken Mother Murderer 193 

XX. — How a Newsboy kept the Wolf Away 201 

XXI.— The Mansion and the Man , 207 

XXII. —Papa Has Gone Home 220 

XXIII.— Making Play-houses 228 

XXIV.— The Wming Workers and their Reward 236 

XXV.— Our Beautiful Darlings 251 

XXVI.— Five Little Chickens 207 



PKEFACE. 



One hundred years ago ! 

One liiindred years hence ! 

One hundred years, since the men, women and 
children of this country first felt that they had a 
home worth striving for. Now, in this Centennial 
Year, there comes to our shores, to the city of 
Brotherly Love, men from all climes and nations, 
representatives of all people, and of thousands of 
industries, to exhibit proofs of their handiwork, that 
the world may know, on this beginning of a new 
era, of the progress made by those who have worked 
to a purpose. 

There are patterns and ideas to be copied after, 
accepted, or rejected. Thousands of things to mark 



X Preface. 

onr progress as a nation and to signify our wants 
in the future. There are inventions and improve, 
ments, themselves so full of suggestions as thought 
crowds to the front to open paths for progress that 
men may work, and women may wait, easier and in 
better conditions to accomplish and to bring forth 
the new, be it of ideas or of humanity. How the 
people have imj)roved during the hundred years 
just agone ! How homes have grown more in num- 
ber and in beauty, as from the thought-work of the 
thinkers results have been reached and comforts have 
increased ! 

An hundred yea/rs hence ! 

Who will think back to the date we now mark ? 
How many of us will be remembered ? How many 
of VIS will deserve mention on the pages of history an 
hundred years from now? Long "before that time 
the writer hereof will have passed on to the Thought- 
land, Over There. Before he goes, he would bring 
an offering to the young and to the old, this year 
Centennial— would do something for ilie future — 



Preface. xi 

would plant seed to bring forth good fruit, not only 
for an hundred years, but forever ; would help men 
and women not only to beautify homes, but to mel- 
low hearts and open lives to the beautiful new light 
that comes from the breath of Him who preached 
•peace on earth and good loili to men. 

"While the farmers are ploughing the fields, the 
children are waiting the morrow, the inventors are 
at work on their improvements, the laborers strug- 
gle to overcome their tasks, and homes are rising 
to greater attractiveness, we would ask a place in 
Home Corners, for these our well-wished chapters. 
Perhaps they will help boys to be real men ; girls 
real women ; men to be better and broader in their 
yiews, and more liberal in their lives. Perhaps, and 
we pray God they will, help to cheer the lives and 
lighten the loads and labors, and to lift the sorrows 
that are in the hearts of thousands of overworked 
wives and mothers. It may be that we can assist 
to buUd and to round out good thoughts, to help 
comfort souls and beautify homes with harmonies 



xii Preface. 

and happiness for the many years to come. There- 
fore "we try, in our way, to live and to labor cheer- 
fully to this purpose ; and if work of ours be worthy 
as our wishes are pure and earnest, our life will not 
have been spent in vain. 

Therefore, to men who have hopes — to women wh» 
have hearts — to children who have souls — to homes 
where there are loved ones to assemble — to all who 
are on the way to the Golden Gardens in the Land of 
the Leal — this unpretending volume of good inten- 
tions, life experiences and home- written chapters, are 
by their author respectfully dedicated in the desire 
to be uaeful. 

MARK M. POMEROY. 

CmoAGO, Sept., 1876. 



Home Harmonies. 



CHAPTER I. 



HOME, HAPPINESS AND HEAVEN, 




OME again ! Another Saturday night. 
Another resting in the bower of con- 
tent with the dear ones and the loved 
ones of the heart, the hearth and the fender. 
Tlie hands on the face of the watch before us 
tell a tale of flying time — that in one short hour 
the day and the week will have gone and that 
the midnight which separates us from the morrow, 
as death separates us from the beautiful life to 
come, will be here with its fleeting shadow. 



14 Home, Hajypiness and Heaven. 

Then, in the twinkling of an eye will begin the 
new day. Its new duties rising from the wreck 
of the week as man shall rise after death to con- 
tinue the work carried on or neglected by us as 
day follows day — as opportunity follows oppor- 
tunity down the hill into the deepening valley of 
receding time. 

The wife who waits with her heart in her 
throat to hear the faint cry of new-born human- 
ity that proves her indeed a mother, has prepared 
for the coming of that which is, albeit humanity, 
still a change. Every golden moment of time 
^was utilized as it flew by. The farmer who fills 
the earth with seeds, works when comes the hour 
and the time. With his work done, he rests, and 
Our Father decrees that the silent influences of 
nature shall, once the seeds be planted, bring 
tliem to fullest fruition of fruit and flower ; 
that the childreu of him M'ho planted and the 
friends who might come to sup at his board 
sliould be fed and strengthened against their 



Home^ Happiness and Heaven. 15 

work on the morrow. So it is that to-night, 
while sleep sits so serenely on the eyelids of 
those we love and labor for as they rest jnst in 
there so near to our study, we would plant good 
seeds, and pray God that they may fall, not by 
the way side, but in the hearts of men, that love 
and kindness, and those heart flowers which 
beautify life, may follow. The man who dare 
be pure, loving and honest, fills the soil which 
shall cover his coffin with seeds which will bear 
beautiful flowers to mark where he sleeps. The 
man who is ashamed to be child-like, loving and 
kind, lest he be not dignified, digs his grave in 
the sand on which the heat shall settle and sear 
and blister. The man who shuts up his heart 
lives for selfish purposes and builds not himself 
into the quiet happiness of a mellow Home 
Corner, will never know happiness or its rela- 
tions to heaven, but will plant seeds which will 
bring forth but thorns, thistles, nettles and 
noxious weeds. 



16 Home, Ha'pjpiness and Heaven. 

How much may a man plant in an hour — in 
three-quarters of an hour? How much may a 
man do for good or for evil, even in the few 
moments before the week shall have fled with ils 
record? How much may we do to plant good 
seeds in hearts before we put aside the pen, 
finish the labor of the week, and seek rest, re- 
pose and the breath of angels on the couch so 
near by % Perhaps we can do more good in the 
hour than we have done in all the week. 

To-day there came a letter from a good friend. 
A busy man of business. A man whose heart is 
BO full of ambition we fear he is not on the road 
to happiness, therefore not living to benefit hu- 
manity. He asks ns to tell him how to be 
happy. 

To answer, the pen must be guided by the 
heart as by the hand. We must throw aside the 
corsets and the stilted wrapping of dignified 
writing and dip the pen into the heart, even as 



Home, Happiness and Heaven. 17 

mau must throw off clumsy garments when he 
BOWS good seed. 

First of all, to be happy you must deserve to 
be. Tliere is a law of exact recompense. There 
is a road to follow. A road this way and a road 
that way. Of a truth doth a man, a woman, a 
child gather as the day is spent in planting. We 
believe that all men can be happy if they will. 
As time passes on, we learn lessons. We have 
learned to keep away from contact with iron 
that burns — from ice that freezes — from waters 
that poison — from temptations tliat weaken — 
from vice that scars — from resorts that shame — 
from liabits that hurt us — from draughts that 
poison — from hearts that are selfish — from asso- 
ciations that degrade — from all that would lower 
our manhood, weaken our influence for good, 
warp our judgment, and decrease the talent 
given us for a purpose, no matter whether that 
talent be little or much. This lesson must be 
learned by all. This seed must be planted deep 



18 Home^ Haziness and Heaven. 

in the heart. A man can make of himself what- 
soever he win. If he wishes to be happy, he 
can be happy — he will le hajpiyy ! If he wishes 
to be loved he will so live as to make himself 
lovable. If he wishes to be pure, and good, and 
noble ; to walk in that line of sunlight to the 
soul which is harmony, he will guide his steps 
away from vice, from temptations and into those 
paths and ways which lead to home, to loving 
hearts, to happiness, and Heaven. Men pray to 
be delivered from temptation, but try not to de- 
liver themselves. They pray to God for happi- 
ness, and expect their . prayer to be answered 
simply because God has the power to answer 
prayer. Men walk in evil ways — they follow 
slippery paths — they rest themselves in slime, 
then expect to be pure and to stand ei*ect and 
clean in their moral apparel. 

The man who will not take care of himself 
must blame no one for his fall. The man who 
does not live to make his home ones Irappy must 



Home, Happiness and Heaven. 19 

not expect to be happy in his home. Roses do 
not cling to icebergs. Little children do not 
romp and laugh around a church because it is a 
high, hard, grim old building, but because they 
find little flowers and something beautiful crop- 
ping out from its foundations. If a man would 
be loved by his wife and worshipped by his little 
ones, he must live for them as for himself and 
come as does the morn of May, with that genial, 
pleasant atmosphere of which good intentions, 
life flowers and eternity's fruits, are born. Frost 
kills and blasts. The warm sun brings life. So 
does kindness bring love and then conies trust, 
faith, home, happiness] Heaven. 

To be happy, a man must look well to himself 
in his mating and in his life. If he dissipates, 
there is a piper and then a penalty to pay. 
Always two prices for each indulgence. If the 
husband loves not his home and seeks the society 
of other women for that spice, social life and lift- 
ing up he claims he cannot find at home, he is 



20 Home, Ha'pjpineiss and Heaven. 

already on the road that leads to sorrow, and 
nnist not expect to be happy till that road be for- 
saken. 

The man who neglects his home will find his 
home ones neglecting him sooner or later. If 
he lives at his club, spends his nights here and 
there in excitement, he is wearing away, neglect- 
ing his family and throwing ice upon the garden 
in which he looks for flowers. No man, we care 
not who he may be, can be away from his home 
night after night, or away on journeys, long 
absent from his family, except at his peril. No 
wife can expect to be here, there, everywhere, 
trotting about to visit, gossip and be amused, and 
expect her husband to remain virtuous, except 
he be a walking skeleton, not subject to those 
influences which affect all who are human. No 
man ever yet was absent a week from his home 
and returned to find his loved ones as he left 
them. There has been a change for better or 
worse — a natural seeking: for somethino- new — 



Some, Hajypiness and Heaven. 21 

an advance up liill or down that be must catch 
up with. 

The man who makes money gives his attention 
to finances. He who becomes an artist must 
study, must make and continue making efforts. 
The merchant who sells goods is ever on the 
alert for something new and attractive. He 
actually courts his business till he falls in love 
therewith, often to the neglect of his family, 
then wonders why payments are not made from 
hearts not in the least his debtor ! 

The way to be happy is to be happy. Leave 
the smell of money in the shop, store or office, 
as much as possible. When the work of the day 
is ended go home. It is the only safe place in 
all the world. Make love to your wife. Romp 
with your babies. Entertain and instruct your 
family. Make calls with her who is your wife. 
Take your wife and children to places of amuse- 
ment — to lectures, to places of recreation. Al- 
ways have some new pleasure ahead, in which 



22 Home, Hajpjpiness and Heaven. 

all cau share. Hours spent pleasantly at home 
brine; rest and strength for the heart. Hours 
spent in excitement from home unfits a man for 
the business of the morrow, and plants burning 
fevers in the soul of her who waits and wonders 
in whoso company her husband wastes the hours 
to which she is in truth entitled. 

There is no hell here or hereafter like that 
raging in the soul of a wife who is doomed to 
wait in silent sadness for the coming of her 
night-wandering husband. He may be sick. 
He may be drunk. He may be squandering his 
earnings, to which she is in j^art entitled, in 
dissipation. He may be pillowing his head on 
the bosom of some other woman. He may be — 
and this to a good woman is enough of hell to 
drive her mad. In view of the rambling of so 
many men, we do wonder that more women are 
not driven to desperation and to ruin. 

Let a wife know she is loved and respected, 
and home is happy. Let a husband know that 



Home, Ha^^iness and Heaven. 23 

liis is the onlj arm, the only heart on which his 
wife will lean, and the veriest ruffian in the 
world will sooner or later be in love with his 
home and those who there, at the close of daj, 
await his coming and the joy it brings. 

]^ot for all the world would we exchange the 
wealth that is found at home. Here we live. 
Here we are safe from the tempest. Here we 
form good resolutions and gain the strength to 
carry them out. Here we rest, develop man- 
hood, study life, read books, write letters, live 
for those who are dear to us, and day by day see 
what a man can do to help make his home happy 
and life a success. Thus every night is given to 
good, to some useful recreation, study or 
entertainment, and every night becomes an oasis 
in the desert of strife, as we find ourselves at 
home, happy and striving for that Heaven tliere 
is for all who dare to be good to themselves and 
to their home ones, as we journey on toward our 
final Saturday Night, 



CHAPTER II. 



'* DARLING, I LOVE YOU. 




OW the rain beats against the glass 
that protects us from the storm rag- 
ing without. The clouds are heavy. 
The air is damp. The ' autumn winds pipe 
coldly as they tell us that winter is coming, and 
that before it comes we must prepare for the 
spring that will follow. 

Beautiful spring ! The joyous time when 
warm zephyrs, gentle rains and fragrant flowers 
will send out their perfume to make the air re- 
dolent; to waken life and nature to love and 
love's renewals. 

The winter approaches. Soon it will be here, 



" Darling, I Love You." 25 

and then, very soon, will it be gone. The rain 
that now beats spitefully against the panes will 
soon have spent its force. In a little while the 
snow V\'il] fall. It will cover the ground and 
hide from view many a rough place ; many a 
misfortune ; many a foundation of foolish un- 
dertaking ; many a little grave and many a large 
one into which some dearly loved form has been 
gently laid away, now that the spirit has no far- 
ther need of its prison-house. 

To-night we have been visiting with an old 
friend who is even dearer than a brother. If 
3"0u have time to listen, we will tell you of him. 
A truthful story of a patient life. Of a brave 
patient man whose life has been to a purpose — 
who has lived; been happy; has suffered and 
who still suffers, Ijut who has never lost his man- 
hood. A little story for boys and for girls ; for 
young men and young women ; for husbands and 
wives — for those who dare be good to themselves 

and to their loved ones. 

2 



26 ^^ DarU%, I Love You:' 

"We knew him years ago. A young man in 
the flush of life. A bold, gentle, loving mar/, 
A man who could stoop to no wrong. A man 
who loved his honor ; who early promised to 
himself that he would live to develop the highest 
possible order of manhood. One who grew 
from boyhood's estate, inanly, prudent, generous, 
forgiving, patient, hopeful, self-reliant, positive 
in his strength, and always jealous of all tliat 
might spot, mar or tarnish his good name. 
lie began life poor. His boyhood was spent on 
the hillsides of the Emph-e State. When came 
the years for labor, he went to the West and 
struck into the future there in a great city on the 
prairies and in tune with the thousands of glo- 
rious young workers in the sundown land who 
are so rapidly coming to be the dictators of 
America. 

By attention to business and care of himself 
that no bad habits should weaken his life, he 
came to be the owner of a business that he had 



"Barling, I Love TouJ^ 27 

created, just as God from nothing made the 
World. Then he came to be the head of a pros- 
perous business firm, and all because he had ever 
tried to be a man and to accumulate all he could 
of good qualities, intelligence and information 
that might be of use mstead of a detriment to 
him. 

In his days of youth he was no loafer, profane 
or Yulgar user of indecent language. He was 
not a whinmg, puling saint, but a man in all the 
word implies of the good and the manly. So we 
came years ago to love him, never asking his 
politics or religion ; of his business or private 
affairs ; never seeking to meddle with that which 
was none of our business ; never knowing of his 
griefs, temptations, heart struggles or inner life 
except as he opened the blinds and invited us to 
look in upon the soul machinery every man and 
woman does well to guard and to improve. One 
day, about five years ago, our friend took to 
himself a wife. A pure, sweet, loving girl. A 



28 " Darling^ I Love Yoxir 

young woman whose form and whose life was 
ever lovely. From the East to the West she 
went with him as his wife. They soon came to 
own a beautiful home. These two who loved 
each other lived for each other. Our friend was 
never found in haunts of dissipation whetting 
his life away to sharpen appetites that so rapidly 
devour all those who tamper too much with in- 
dulgence. His home was his Heaven. His wife 
was his wisdom. His love was his life. He 
worked day after day for the beautiful woman 
whose life had so blended with his own. "We 
have seen them in their home. We have seen 
them in their beautiful surroundings, where the 
elegant furniture, the adornments of room after 
room were as nothing in comparison to the sweet 
atmosphere of harmony that pervaded their liv- 
ing place and shone like a halo over their every- 
day lives. 

She who was his wife had fullest confidence 
in her husband. She knew him to be the soul 



" Darling^ I Love YouP 29 

of honor. She was content to live to make theirs 
a beautiful, charming, happy home. With his 
little faults she kept up no continual quarrel, and 
so thej all died out. The world was beautiful 
to her, when it used her husband well. "When he 
returned from the brain-racking duties of the 
business office and the feverish labor of the 
think-shop, how her kiss captured him at the 
threshold ; how her smile Ijound him to another 
than a business life ; how her soft hand drew 
the thorns of care from his brain as her fingers 
followed themselves down over brow and cheek 
till his very life was mellowed anew by the mag- 
netism of her love and the caressing touch of 
loving, wifely gentleness. Do you wonder that 
this strong man lived for this pure, loving, gentle 
woman ? Why ! In all the world is no power 
save death that can unweld hearts thus mated. 
When he came home, her mantle of love was 
wrapped about him. Sh& was not ashamed to 
be known as a wife who loved her husband. He 



30 ''Darling, I Love You:' 

was not ashamed to be known as a man who 
adored his wife. 

Thus they grew into the most harmonious 
relationship. They struggled not for wealth nor 
fretted themselves to death at the door-sill of 
hollow, frivolous, fashionable society which meas- 
ures men by their dollars and women by the 
fripperies of that extravagance which excites 
envy. They grew into each other's life. His 
touch was ever gentle. His voice was ever low 
and sweet to her, though in the rattle of business 
and on the platform defending his principles it 
was loud, sharp, clear, cutting, and ever pointed 
to the centre of the target. He never laded his 
breath with poison, nor was other than a sober, 
gentle man in all that was for his wife, his home, 
his life. 

The better we knew this man the more we 
loved him, and the less we wondered that his 
wife loved him so. The more we knew- of them 
in their beautiful home, basking in the sunshine 



>t 



" Darling, I Love YouP 31 

of God, the better we understood how and why 
he adored the woman who was leading her hus- 
band to Heayen ; who was making his life 
liapi:)y ; who was developing his strength and 
endurance and was hedging him all in and about 
with those soul-lighting, protecting influences so 
many wives and husbands affect to despise as 
beneath the cold-blooded forms of that dignity 
which follows ignorance, selfishness, carelessness, 
and mismating. 

One day our friend went to his home to find 
her whom he had kissed " good-by " so lovingly 
in the morning, very ill. Iler face was flushed. 
Her eyes were kindling to a look of pain. Her 
breath was hot and indicated fever. Her beauti- 
ful forehead was not as cool as usual. The 
smile came slowly to her face as she met her 
husband at the door of their charmino; house. 
She laid her hands in his. She pillowed her 
head on his breast as he tenderly kissed her lips, 
her eyes, her forehead. He felt at once the 



32 ''Darling, I Love You^ 

presence of an enemy, and asked her lie loved so 
well, " What of the hour." 

" Merely a trifle ill, my darling." 

Then she kissed him again and again. Her 
head sank to his breast as his arms were so lov- 
ingly folded around the one who to him and his 
life was so sweet and so precions. Never did a 
mother handle more tenderly her first-born than 
did he who was and who is onr dearly loved 
friend, lead her to a sofa and there composed her 
to rest. 

Physicians were summoned. The angels of 
sympathy came into the house and possessed it. 
The loved wife grew weaker and weaker. It 
was not like a bold enemy that death came, but 
like a sneak thief, ashamed to rob the loving 
man who never did him harm. Perhaps death 
had pity and stayed his hand longer than his 
wont ! Days faded into weeks and weeks into 
months. Slowly the loved one we Dt down over 
the sands that border the wondrous river. Gen- 



^^ Darling, I Love You?' 33 

tly, sweetly, lovingly, mournfully, heroically, 
patiently, caressingly, did the husband keep her 
company. By day and by night he held her on 
his breast tenderly in his perfect love. He gave 
her life from his magnetism ; but alas ! alas ! 
the beckoning hand of God that came like a 
feeble shadow, grew more and more distinct. 
Human skill, patient care, gentlest nursing, 
sweetest love and purest affections were as noth- 
ing against the inevitable. The shadows grew 
deeper in the home, the smiles went out from 
the heart of our friend and left lines of care in 
their place. 

One night she bade father, mother, relatives, 
all a last "good-by," then she motioned them 
all away from her presence. Standing there on 
the threshold of Our Father in Heaven, her soul 
being filled with melody from the unseen, she 
reached out her bloodless hand to him who was 
her life, her husband. She turned her eyes into 

his with volumes of love in every glance — in one 
2* 



34 " Darling^ I Love YouP 

long loving look. Her head rested on his breast 
where so often she had slept to sweetest dream- 
ing. She put away from her all of home ; all 
of beautiful things ; all of life but her loved 
husband. She turned her face up to meet his. 
Their eyes met, were drowned in tears. She 
whispered so low and yet so distinct — 

" Darling, I love you." 

And tlius — and thus : with a smile on the lips 
of the patient woman who for months and 
months had suffered with no complaining voice, 
look or act, did this loved, loving, lovely wife bid 
her husband good-by to join the angel hosts in 
the Land of the Leal. 

" Darling, I love you ! " 

O ! what a beautiful legacy ! IIow like a 
sweet solace — like a poem — lilce a promise for 
the future did that expression of a life take and 
make a home in the grief-laden heart of him 
who heard its just understood whisper. Li life 
they were togethci'. In death they were not — 



" Darling^ I Love You^ 35 

they will not be divided. There are crowns of 
laurels and of gold stndded with diamonds ; 
there have been songs and prose written as tri- 
butes to loving, devoted manhood. Monuments 
have been built, begun and left unfinished in 
honor of men who achieved greatness. But 
there never was sweeter, greater, purer tribute 
than this. Never a crown of brighter lustre. 
Never a reward for a life of honor, probity and 
constancy sweeter than the circlet of words 
breathed over the face and after-life of a hus- 
band as his wife stood in the Gateway of God, 
when forgetting all of life — with no dread of 
the future, she whispered, 

" Darling, I love you." 

When so pure a love speaks in this presence it 
is a tribute to worth. It is a reward for well 
living. It is a God-whispered promise for the 
future 1 How much better for men to Kve to 
be thus breathed upon by one who stands in the 
presence of God than to live only to develop the 



36 ''Darling, 1 Love YouP 

low, the coarse, the brutal, the vulgar, the cruel, 
the abusive and the destructive. There are those 
who live only to gratify animal passion, to please 
themselves. To bring out the coarser pictures. 
There are women who are cold, heartless, selfish ; 
who love the world more than home ; who do not 
realize that the mission of a wife and of a mother 
is to bring her loved ones to Heaven. There are 
those who say that love is foolishness ; that 
affection is weakness ; that the rifting frost and 
the blighting chill that forms the stately iceberg 
is better than the sun and gentle warmth that 
covers the earth with beauty. But God does not 
think so ! Angels do not think so ! Those who 
love us here, and whom we love, do not think so ! 
Those to whom we give our lives should not 
think so — they will not if they are right of heart. 

" Darling, I love you." 

What a volume of reward and promise is this ! 
The winter is now upon us, but the gates will 
soon be opened. The workers in the garden of 



" Darling, I Love YouP 37 

God are preparing homes for us, they are doing 
there for us as we strive to do for them here. The 
good seeds we plant here will all bloom. Ovei 
There. In a few days we too can go home. In 
a few days we can cross the river to be welcomed 
by those who have gone before us, and who will 
await us to fling their arras about our necks, to 
pillow our aching heads on their bosoms and to 
gently whisper as did the lovely wife of whom 
we write. With our friend and brother we have 
stood before the word of God — under the mellow 
light in the East. With him we have walked in 
sweet companionship over many a thorny road. 
Have seen the dead raised to life, and have 
found shelter from many a storm. With him 
we have rejoiced in the possession of the beauti- 
ful, and have learned how to think. With him 
we have mourned under the sorrows that have 
swept over his soul to darken his life— with him 
we again approach the East. See there! Look 
you out from the Chamber of Meditation ! Look 



38 ^^ Darling, I Love You:' 

up ! See the temple, the lights, the loving ones. 
Over Yonder. In that Golden Land, under the 
gleaming of mellow lights stands waiting the 
one who so loved yon and whom yon so loved. 
There is no look of pain on her face. The roses 
have come to her cheeks once more. She points 
to the fruits and flowers you have for years been 
planting in this life, all of which are living and 
beautiful Over There. She points in triumph 
tinted by love unutterable to her home — to your 
home in the Gardens of God. How can you 
i-each her ? Look you ! From your feet to hers 
— from your life to hers is a bridge. " Darling 
I love yoity See how it reaches from shore to 
shore ! Dry your tears. Follow the line — walk 
tlie bridge, fearing nothing, and soon will the 
hands you now miss touch you so gently again. 
Soon will yon feel her loving presence. Soou 
will her eyes be the light of your life again. 
Soon will life rest in life, and the home she will 
welcome you to will be a million times more 



" Darling, I Love You^'' 39 

beautiful than the one you gave her on earth. 
Gird up your heart. Bear yourself bravely. 
The bridge will not break I Walk it from this 
shore to that one, and soon the feet now encased 
in sandals will be slippered in the daisies of Heav- 
en, and He whose hand is Open to all who trust 
in Him will smile and gently say : " Well done ! " 
and well done on Earth is to be well done forever. 
How our heart goes out in sympathy with, to 
and for those who mourn for their loved ones. 
To the parents who have lost the children they 
lo\'ed. To the young hearts from whom death 
lias taken the support to which their souls had 
'i(:^'un to cling, for none can cross the stormy 
ocean so well alone ! To the children who ha ve 
iost their loved parents, but more than all to the 
loving wife, and the manly husband whom death 
iias bereft, not to make us sad, but to give us 
waiters, watchers, and welcome so sweet in the 
(jolden Gardens where there is no grief, no soi'- 
i-ow, no mourning, as on earth this thoughtful 
Saturday !Night. 



CIIAPTEE III. 



LEAVING THE OLD EUBBISH. 




[IIS afternoon, perhaps two hours be- 
fore sunset, tired and head-weary 
after several hours' continued labor 
at the desk, reading letters and newspapers from 
different parts of the country, studying the 
Avants and sentiments of the people in different^ 
localities, and writing now and then an item, wc 
left the office and started for a walk in a distant 
part of the citj^, to see something new. Would 
any of our young friends have been afiaid to 
have gone where they never were before l 
Would any of them be afraid to leave their 



Leaving the Old Rubhish. 41 

homes in the country and come to New York 
to visit us ; to tell of the incidents of the trip ? 
Perhaps you may say you do not know how 
to reach the great city, where are thousands 
of people, and great buildings, and stores full 
of beautiful things, and articles you never saw 
and never will see till you come here. Still you 
could come. Even the smallest of all our little 
friends could come. Every day thousands of 
T'eople come here, and after we have told you 
the way, and who to come with, or have sent a 
silent discreet messenger for you, surely you 
could come with him and not be afraid, for all 
S(()me people may say there are dangers along the 
road, and it is hard to leave friends, who soon 
Would follow you, glad — Oh ! so glad to have a 
rtist and to see with their own eyes beauties 
htiard of, but never fully realiz;ed. 

' We want some of our little friends to write 
aikd tell us if they would be afraid to come here 
t'^ - - us. Then we can write another chapter 



42 Leaving the Old liuNnsh. 

on purpose for tlie little folks, and try to tell 
them something they can try to remember. 

Walking along, two or three miles from the 
office, we came to a man who was piling a lot of 
household goods on a wagon. Beside the wagon 
were ever so many different articles he seemed 
disposed to leave for some one else. There were 
old boots and shoes, old rags, old tin-ware, old 
chairs, cheap, rotten and broken, and many old 
trinkets of no use to any one. As he was trying 
to fasten his load together and seemed to need 
help, it was easy to stop and assist him. 

" Thank you, sir, very much," said he, as he 
lifted his hat to wipe the perspiration from hi:s 
brow. j 

" You are very welcome, sir. No doubt yoi|. 
have helped others who needed help, and will do 
so again ; so it is a pleasure to assist you," 

" True, sir. I always like to lend a helping 
hand. Many is the bit of good one does in tha^t 
way and is none the poorer from it." 



Leaving the Old Hiibhish. 43 

" That seems to be in accordance with the 
religion of the One who was not understood 
while on earth, but whew lives even after they 
crucified Him. Are you moving from here ? " 

"Yes, sir. I am going with my family to a 
new house up-town." 

" Accept congratulations on your good for- 
tune Going into a better house than this one, 
we presume ? " 

"Yes, sir, much better, and in a much better 
neighborhood. I am going where I shall not 
liave to work so hard, and to act as superinten- 
dent of a large establishment in which a num- 
ber of brotlier workmen are employed." 

" That indicates that you have been a good 
workman, and have good recommends." 

" Yes, sir. I have. Several men who used to 
work down here with me have gone up there 
and have given testimony in my favor, and some 
of the firm have been down here to see my 
work, and have offered me a good place." 



44 Leaving the Old Rubbish. 

" What church do you belong to ? " 

" Not any, sir. They did not ask me. All 
they seemed to want jyas an honest man, who 
was a good workman, able to understand some- 
thing of their plans." 

" Are you not afraid to leave this situation 
here, and go there ? " 

" No, sir. There is more room up there than 
here. A larger shop. Better workmen. Better 
machinery than here. A great many tools and 
appliances invented and discovered by work- 
men who went there before I was called. I 
think the place so much better that I am going 
soon as possible." 

"Do you intend to leave these old articles 
behind you — these things you seem to have 
thrown into the street ? " 

" Yes, sir. They are but old rul)bish, of no 
use to me. I have been foolish — have squan- 
dered money to buy many and many an article 
of no use to me. I shall leave all the old i-ub- 



I 



Leaving the Old Bubhish. 45 

bisli behind me, and take only the best, and 
there is not so much of it as I wisli there was, 
or so much as I might have had, but that I was 
too thoughtless and careless. But I must be 
going. If you ever come up town I will be 
glad to see you, for you have been kind, and 
given me a little help in a friendly way." 

" Good day, and good luck." 

" Thank you, sir. Good day." 

All the way home we thought of that man, 
and of the rubbish he has left behind. 

To-night we have thought of the rubbish we 
have accumulated in life. Some of these days all 
of us will be helped into the carriage that will 
take us to the new residence — to the purer coun- 
try and the companionship of better workmen. 
How many of us will have much to move? 
How many of us will have to leave behind more 
than we can take with us to be of use in the new 
workshop ? 

Some of these days a messenger will come and 



46 Leaving the Old Eubhish. 

say we are wanted elsewhere. Then we will be 
advanced. That is, if we are good workmen. 
If not, we may be compelled to remain here till 
the master tears down the building, and we are 
thrown out of employ, to wait around and wan- 
der and seek for labor of any kind, when, had 
we taken care of ourselves, a situation at better 
wages were ours to count on for a certainty. 

Look out for the rubbish, boys. That is what 
loads the wagon, and when it is all brought out 
to the street, the people will know how we spent 
our earnings. The habits of life count for or 
against us. Men learn to lie, and to clieat, and 
to become selfish, grasping and avaricious. 
They often live only to accumulate wealth. But 
gold will some day be nothing but rubbish. In 
the new shop, in the East, under the smile of the 
Great Worker and Architect, whose helpers all 
honest men are, there is no rubbish. All tliat 
must be left behind when we go from school here 
to our Home in the golden-hued Eternal, where 



Leaving the Old Riibbish. 47 

good actions, pure lives, honest motives and ear- 
nest striving to live to a good purpose while on 
earth, are the credits passed to our credit after 
the chemical change we call death shall have 
come, and we go learn of our Treasures where 
God of Love and the Master Mind of All is the 
Banker who every day we live here puts our 
good deeds out to abundant interest. 

Then the question will be, what have you done 
to help others ? To lighten hearts % To lift the 
loads of care that come like shadows of the night 
to weigh down men and women and children all 
over the land as here we work — not waiting so 
much to be saved as to save ourselves here, that 
we have rewards of our own to enjo}^ Over 
There. 

To-night we have been thinking of two 
brothers. One of thein is rich as they count 
wealth in gold. But he is not rich in that senti- 
ment of truth and honor, and fearless disposition 
to do rio-ht which will count to his credit in the 



4:8 Leaving the Old Ruhhish. 

Eternal existence. He is cold, selfish, avaricious. 
We never knew him to give even one little 
penny to the poor. He has no charity for 
others. He is almost brutal to his family, and 
lives only to demand homage from those he can 
make to fear him. 

The other brother is a mechanic. A Tubal 
Cain. He works by a forge and sings as he toils. 
His wife is proud of him and of his noble, 
loving heart. His little ones, three in number, 
watch for his coming each night, and every 
Saturday night, and romp with him after the 
work of the day is done, till he says he is rested. 
He rolls them on the floor, and he stands them 
on their heads, till father, mother and little ones 
laugh with delight and are envied by many a rich 
man and woman, who put corsets on their hearts 
and stifle affection in order to be fashionable. 

He works in a blacksmith-shop. He heats 
great bars of iron, and lays them on the anvil^ 
and rains upon them titanic blows till the sparks 



Leaving the Old Ruhhish. 49 

play and dance around his shop after the echoes 
as they roll out upon the street. His hand, when 
it grasps the hammer, is hard and strong — his 
muscles are brawny, and his strength like that of 
a giant, as he is, for he asks odds of no man, and 
believes in that Heaven which is reached by the 
door of honesty, framed in Divine love for all 
who love themselves enough to keep their hearts 
pure. Now he strikes hard, powerful blows till 
the whipped metal becomes obedient to mind, 
and matter and manner of direct application. 
Then the blows are lighter than the love taps on 
the cheek of an affianced, for he is a master 
workman, who knows what, and when, and how 
to strike, making of his life a roundelay of 
•mechanical song — a cadence of music, ever in 
iiarmony with the Great Maestro who gives us 
Work and gives rewards only to those who do it 
"willingly and well. 

t This one of the brothers will have but little 
f ubbish when he moves. He will go to his new 



50 Leaving the Old Huljhish. 

home and to his labor in the Eternal Pattern 
shop, where God is Designer, and where millions 
of those who were once of earth are His Assist- 
ants, with a strong heart, a well-directed life and 
the loved ones of Home to bear him company 
and testify to his worth as a man and a citizen, 
as he is now a happy, loving, deserving hnsband 
and father, resting with his loved ones at Home, 
where he is making others happy this, to them 
all, blessed Saturday Night. 




CHAPTER IV. 



NOW THE SEED-TIME THEN THE HARVEST. 




OT far from this great city is a street 
lined with gardens and houses. Small 
houses wherein live men and women 
and children who work. Homes of the gar- 
deners. To-day, when walking along by these 
little homes, looking at the workers, we ventm^ed 
to stop in front of a garden wherein a man, a 
woman, and three children were engaged in pre- 
paring to plant. The man was a philosopher. 
After a pleasant good-morning, he lifted from 
his head an old cap, wiped with his hand the 
perspiration from his brow, and answered : 

" Come in ? Certainly, if you wish to, and 
you may spade all day if you want to ! " 



52 Now the Seed-Time — then the Harvest. 

It was fun. Working in the garden as when 
a boy, years and years ago. The boys were 
gathering the straws, and sticks, and asparagus 
stalks into piles and burning them. The good 
wife and mother was working among the rose- 
bushes and other light shrubbery, cutting, clip- 
ping, thinning and trimming. All were busy. 
Some way, it always did seem easier to do chores 
for neighbors than to work for ourself. That is 
a sort of " play work," perhaps because it is 
more social, therefore more enjoyable. We 
spaded and raked — raked and spaded till both 
palms were blistered. Then the man laughed, 
and said we could rest. The woman brought 
out a bowl of delicious buttermilk, while the 
boys were proud as little kings to think their 
hands were not so tender as ours. All right, 
boys. But sometimes, when you are soundly 
sleeping, with head and hands at rest, we would 
give much to sleep and to rest as you can, and to 
have a play spell from the work of the desk and 



Now the Seed-Time — then the Harvest. 53 

the sanctum. In the winter you can rest. All 
night yon can sleep. When it rains, you can go 
a-fishing. When the harvest is over you can 
rest for awhile. But all these days and times 
the work of a writer is never ended. For the 
editor of a paper there is but little rest. Like a 
woman, his work is never finished. 

Sitting on the bench by the side of the snug 
cottage home, the gardener said : 

" Yes, that is the way. Put your spade down 
straight and deep ! Cut the weeds ; cut the 
roots ; go deep as you can ; then you will have a 
good garden and fine crops. Nine years ago, 
when I came here, this was a patch of weeds. 
It was an old, worn-out pasture-field. Here are 
two acres of ground. Now look at it, ready for 
the seed. It is all we can cultivate, and that is 
enough. When a man has all he can do, what 
more can he do? The man who does a little 
well, does more than he who attempts much and 
but partly succeeds. My boys are regular 



64 l^ow the Seed- Time — then the Harvest. 

workers, and their mother is another one. We 
are a worliing family, and as we are always 
busy, we are always contented and happy. In a 
few weeks yon may see her rosebushes covered 
with flowers. She cuts and trims dead twigs 
and useless branches now, and by-and-by she will 
clip thousands of roses and rosebuds from those 
bushes, and the rich people who would not 
notice us to-day will pay large prices for our 
flowers, and wear the result of om- labor when 
they would appear in extra dress. Out there 
where the boys are burning trash will soon be 
early plants, and they will bring the money 
to save or invest. After awhile we will have 
a beautiful home here — beautiful flowers and 
time to rest. People will stop to admire and to 
ask who did all this work, and I'll tell them that 
my wife and the children and I did it. Come, 
boj'S, let us finish this job before noon." 

The gardener resumed his spading. The boys 
continued picking up all the little bits of rub- 



Now the Seed-Time — then the Harvest. 55 

bish and burning it, while the cheery woman, 
with her knife and big shears, went to work 
again to trim and to educate her roses. Now 
that the work of the week is ended, and the ones 
who live in their cottage home are at rest, we 
must work, nor sleep till this chapter of social 
talk with our friends be finished. 

The man was right. There is but one way. 
Put the spade down straight and deep. Cut 
clear through the roots. Bring the bottom to 
the top. Let light and air and new life into the 
soil. Plant good seeds instead of weeds, that the 
yield may be to save, not to be destroyed. Little 
by little, and all at last is turned. So it is in 
life. Little by little we live, and make a good 
name, of property, of influence, of reputation. 
So, too, must we cut deep and true to the line, 
no matter what mass of bones, or bits of rubbish, 
or useless matter be brought to light, exposed 
to view and then burned. In the religious 
world there is need of better spading. In the 



56 Now the Seed-Time — then the Uavoest. 

political world there is still more need of deep 
cutting and of exposing the r^^bbish to the light 
that human interests may be the better cared 
for. 

The woman was right. She cut and pruned, 
and trimmed ; she educated her plants to bear 
beautiful flowers. With those she loved slie 
labored. What belonged to them also belonged 
to her. That made their place a home. And 
that is the only way to make a home. Give 
each and all a sliare of the work, and let all 
enjoy the reward. Man, woman and children 
conferred with each other. They assisted each 
other. The woman did not use the heavy spade, 
or gather rubbish for the fires, but with steady 
hand she pruned, and suggested, and kindled life 
into her taste, and thus to the work of the 
others gave beauty, as the flower by contrast haj 
its own beauty and adds to that of the plant 
which bore it. 

Now we have a lesson in all this. The walk 



Now the Seed- Time — then the Harvest. 57 

of the morning gave ns food for thought. The 
lesson is not for others, but the worker who 
writes this. We must cut deep and fear not. 
Plant good seed — honest thoughts, and prune our 
labor. Life is but a field — a desert — a barren 
plain — a morass or a garden, as we will it. The 
boy who reads this can, if he will, make his life 
beautiful. It is for him to say whether he will 
or not. In the abstract it is none of our busi- 
ness if the gardener plant weeds or flowers — 
the reward will be his. But the road on which 
he lives is the more beautiful — his home the more 
attractive — the suburbs of the city are more 
charming with his garden filled with flowers 
than with ugly, poisonous vines and weeds. If 
we could only live our lives over again how much 
deep cutting and pruning there would be. Much 
tliat has been done would be left undone. We 
should strive to plant only seeds — such seeds as 
would bring forth the best of fruit. The boy who 
would live to useful manhood, has much pruning 



58 Now the 8eed- Time— then the Harvest. 

to do. He must be careful lest lie sow uettles 
instead of pinks. Therefore it is well that he 
take the advice of those who for years have 
worked in the garden, and who have come 
to know the good seeds and the good fruit from 
the poor. We should all cultivate the flower of 
kindness — the, vine of patience; should plant 
good thoughts and set out early in life the hedge 
of honor. Once this hedge gains life and begins 
a growth about the heart, a man's life puts forth 
good fruit continually. But if the boy plant his 
mind to hate, envy, deceit, ill-temper, reckless- 
ness, selfishness, base passions and all those vines 
which strangle and destroy, when comes the seed- 
time, he will have nothing of the beautiful in 
his nature to be used for the beautifying of the 
Eternal Gardens, where the flowers of the soul— 
tlie fruit of the Tree of Life will make us happy 
or unhappy; we in this life shall culti\ate and 
determine. 

Then heaven bless the ones who make gardens 



Now the Seed- Time— then the Harvest. 59 

beautiful and homes places for rest and of happi- 
ness, for they are ones who make the country 
great, the people good and humanely better, and 
who plant here to reap Over There, where the 
spu-it lives if it is useful, and where it dies if it 
is not. 




CHAPTER V. 



HOW THE BUILDEKS BUILD, 




jE not discouraged. With the new year 
let us all form new resolutions, shun 
the temptations that have weakened 
our efforts the past year, and try to make our- 
selves strong the coming year. The hope of tliis 
country rests in its young people, and in the 
work of those who have grown in years and who 
teach good lessons. From the bad, the vicious, 
the dissipated, the selfish, the lazy dreamers, the 
ones who have no care for themselves, the avari- 
cious and lovers of pleasure more than work, the 
world has nothing to expect. 

Across the way from where we write, a house 



How the Builders Build. 61 

of worship has within a few months been nearly 
completed. Not long since, we stepped from the 
sidewalk to the top of its foundation walls. The 
foremen of the laborers was there, coat off, giv- 
ing directions to men employed. 

" What are you building % " 

" A church, or meeting-house." 

" You are putting in very heavy foundations." 

" Yes — it is to be a large, substantial building, 
capable of holdiug a large number or people." 

" When is it to be completed ? " 

" We are to have the edifice up and enclosed 
by the time snow falls, then can work through 
the winter finishing the inside and ornamental 
work." 

Now the edifice is in the condition the work- 
men said it would be. One after another, blocks 
of stone were lifted to place and squarely piled 
one upon the other, till the men of skill away up 
there on the spire can hardly be heard by the 
laborer on the ground nearly an hundred feet 



62 How the Builders Build. 

beneath him. Little by little that church has 
grown, as men of industry have labored thereon. 
While the masons and builders have been at 
work day after day, hundreds of men and women 
and children have spent hours watching them. 
But all the gazing, the watching, the easy stand- 
ing about to see what was going on or going up, 
has not increased the size of the building or 
helped even an atom of mortar to its place as 
designed by the builder. 

We want the boys to remember this. Idle- 
ness v/astes time, means and opportunities. To 
stand about looking on, builds nothing. The 
only way to do is to begin, and labor steadily, 
faithfully, hopefully till the work is finished. 
Thus do boys become great, useful men. They 
become living examples. God's helpers to 
beautify the world and benefit mankind. 

They tell us that man can do nothing to im- 
prove the world. Boys, never believe one word 
of such nonsense. All those who work in the 



How the Builders Build. 63 

vineyard are helpers, beautifiers. This is the 
work, the mission of men. The teacher who 
conducts the little child from " A " and " B " 
to the college platform where diplomas are 
awarded is a helper of the Almighty Power of 
growth and improvement. The child who digs 
in the ground and plants flower seeds on the 
grave of a mother, father or sister, is a beautifier 
of the earth, and of mind. The housewife who 
keeps her house in order ; whose law is neatness 
and order, who plants seeds of flowers and vines, 
attends their wants for water and loosening of 
the soil about their roots, adds as many beauties 
and improvements to the world as she raises 
flowers or trains vines. At last she has covered 
the bare dirty earth with verdure and beauty, 
has made her little cabin or cottage home a vine- 
clad bower, and proved herself more of a minis- 
tering angel though she has never left her home, 
than all the idle, gadding, fashionable women 
of the world, who live only to show their dress 



64 How the Builders Build. 

and jewelry as a peacock struts to exhibit its 
plmnage. 

The wife who does this encourages her hus- 
band, develops his better nature, helps him to 
strengthen his manhood, and at last the two walk 
lov-ingly along, hand in hand in that way which 
leads on to the society of the eternal workers, 
in the Land of the Leal. Such wives become 
the Heaven-registered heroines — the saviours 
of men— the educators of childreu, the gloi-y of 
the nation. To such women, not to tlie children 
of fasliion and graspers for greed, does this 
country — does any country owe its greatness. 
For all such wives, mothers, women, do we 
earnestly pray good angels to be with them with 
such presence and whisperhigs as will make this 
a glad, a happy year. 

As the workmen builded the church — as the 
woman from good seeds carefully planted and 
well trained, has grown a bower of beauty and 
a means to shade her home from the heat of tlie 



How the Builders Build. 65 

day, so can every boy who reads this, if he will, 
add to his mental stature, and to the beauty of 
his life. That which harms our neighbor we 
will not use. Harsh, angry words, wound hearts 
and tend to make life bitter, so we try never to 
use them. Profane words, in conversation, seem 
to us like dirty finger-marks on white walls, or 
tares and scratches on a beautiful picture, so 
we never will indulge in profanity. The use 
of drinks that intoxicate weaken the brain, 
wastes money which is the result of labor, 
deadens the intellect and blunts the finer feel- 
ing of men till at last the fashion becomes the 
habit — the habit a curse which brings the most 
skilful workman from the top of the wall, and 
from council with those who plan, to a level 
below that from which he started. So we will 
never use intoxicating liquors as a beverage. 
How many boys in the land dare make and 
honor such resolutions ? How many men dare 
thus resolve and live all of this year ? We do 



66 Moid the Guilders Build. 

not saj they must, for we have no right thus 
to speak. How many a fond, loving mother 
would rather her son would thus resolve and 
live than to receive a new lease of life 'i How 
many a wife, whose heart is ever heavy and 
whose vision is ever clouded by the thoughtless- 
ness of a dissipated husband, would rather he 
would say to her tliat no more would he by drink 
blur his mind, and disorder his heart to the finer 
feelings, than to receive the finest present the 
world could bestow ? How many a son, hus- 
band, brother, could thus make the new year — 
the coming year — all j^ears, happy ones to him- 
self and those he loves, with such a present, 
that costs nothing and is laden with benefits. 
If boys and men would build upon their man- 
hood, and Kve to a purpose, each week of life 
would be a pleasant picture to contemplate, as 
the noble worker looked back thereon from his 
resting-place with all the home ones each Sat- 
urday Night. 



CHAPTER YI. 



THE HOMELESS CHILD, 




FEW days since a poor little German 
girl, of six years, came to this city 
on an emigrant ship with her father 
and mother. The father died as the vessel 
landed ; the mother, sick with nervons fever and 
prostration, died within a few days in a low 
boarding-house where she had been taken. The 
little girl was thus left a stranger in a strange 
land, without a home or loved ones to care for 
her. She w^as taken care of by the police, and 
now a home has been found for her. And who 
do you think gave her shelter and a corner of, 
their hearts ? A rich merchant, say you ? 



68 The Homeless Child. 

No. The man who took her to his home was 
a poor German — a workman in a piano manufac- 
tory. The father of five children, the eldest not 
yet ten years of age. While talking about this 
little girl, he said, in his broken English : 

" Mine heart came clear to mine throat when 
I saw her in the police station-house, with no 
one to love her. It is pretty hard times at our 
house, with seven mouths to feed, and only one 
pair of hands to earn the money, and I was 
going home ashamed of myself. Just then she 
looked with her blue eyes into my eyes, and 
looked so hurt, and heart-sick, and scared like a 
little baby, I said I would go ask my wife about 
her right away. All the way home I thought of 
my little ones, and how they came to me, and I 
said to my wife, if our babies come to us this "way 
this poor little homeless one came that way, and 
it was all the same. Then my wife said it was 
all right — that our little Meenie should sleep in 
the bed with us, just as she did when a little 



The Homeless Child. 69 

baby, and that poor little Marjie should have 
Meenie's little bed in the corner. And now she 
is one of us already, and just as good as all the 
rest. 

" The times are pretty hard, but a man with 
a good home is rich enough to take care of one 
little orphan, and then I would want somebody 
to take care of my babies, if their mother and 
their father were dead, and they had no home 
of their own." 

We cannot help loving the piano-maker. 
Why, do you know that the heart of this poor 
man is larger than many a palace in this country 
— many a church ? It was large enough to take 
in a poor little waif, and there are thousands 
and thousands of houses, owned by rich men, 
where, for the world, the inmates would not be 
bothered by homeless children. It was not for 
us to ask the religion of this poor man. If he had 
said he had no religion, we should tell him at 
once that he was guilty of falsehood or was mis- 



70 The Homeless Child. 

taken. No matter where he came from — no 
matter if his hands are hard — his heart is in the 
right place, and it does seem as if the little 
help he gave the orphan child, on her road 
over the thorns, would aid him many a mile 
on the road that leads to the beautiful gardens 
of rest. 

Little do the children, the boys and girls in 
their country homes, think of the terribleness 
of orphanage in great cities, or they would love 
their homes more, and always be careful to be 
good children. In the country are green fields, 
forests, rivulets and rivers ; flowers and pas- 
time. There are houses and homes here and 
there, and hardly an orphan or a homeless child 
for miles. There are children to play with — 
beautiful things to see, and no such hard, thank- 
less life, cold and unfeeling, like the stones in 
the streets, as the j)Oor children of the cities 
have for their homes. 

It may be that the German piano-maker has 



The Homeless Child. 71 

faults — but lie has virtues and charity. Better a 
sinner with a warm heart and sympathy for the 
poor than a saint in snow. The one sometimes 
cares for others — the frozen saint cares only for 
himself. Perhaps the poor man finds it work to 
keep the wolf of hunger from his door. It may 
be that he has been laughed at by companions 
for savins; his earnings and for having a home, 
but now he is king over them all, for as did 
the blessed Saviour whose life was for and 
with the poor rather than the selfish rich, he 
has said : " Suffer little children to come unto 
me. 

AVe know good angels — good spirits — good 
thoughts will be his, and for those of his home, 
as will come to all of us who are kind and 
thoug-htf ul of those who are in distress. At best 
we are all but children, with a home yet to find ; 
but as we are kind to others — to the poor and 
the weak ones — so will the Good Father be kind 
to us, and give us a home with Ilis children 



72 



The Homeless Child. 



after we shall have crossed the Great Ocean, and 
stand waiting for some one to lead ns — to start 
ITS on the way in the life beyond the work of the 
present, and the weary Saturday Night. 




CHAPTER VII. 



WANTING TOO MUCH. 




EOPLE are to blame for much of 
their uuhappiness. They want too 
much. They have no control over 
their wishes — continually long for the impossi- 
ble and thus run to want as vines run to weeds 
if not pruned. Not many days ago we visited a 
gentleman at his house on business. He sent a 
note sayiug he wanted to see us at once, on im- 
portant matters. We never before saw such a 
family. His want was purely a speculative 
one, not worthy the thought or attention of any 
person of sense. Wliile in his house his wife 
told us of her wants. His five cliildren had 



74 Wanting too Much. 

more wants than ten grown people could supply. 
The man wanted to be rich. He wanted to be 
helped into some place where he could make 
money. If he could be assisted to some official 
position, anywhere, he would willingly give one 
half the salary to whoever would help him to 
the place. It was for this he wanted an interview. 

" What is your present business ? " 

" Foreman of a manufacturing establish- 
ment." 

" What wages do yon receive ? " 

" Forty-five dollars a week." 

" Unusually good wages. Can yon not sup- 
port your family on that sum ? " 

" Yes, but I want to make money. My wife 
wants so many things I cannot get for her. The 
children all want so many things, I dread com- 
ing home. Their mother tells them to tease 
father till he gets what they want. When the 
children are not teasing me for something, their 
mother is — if I will only buy something or 



Wanting too Much. 75 

other for them; and as I can have no peace 
as a poor man, I must find some way to be a 
rich man." 

" What does your wife want most ? " 

" She wants a gold watch and a long chain to 
wear around her neck, and she wants a new silk 
dress, and a new stylish bonnet, and new furni- 
ture for the parlor, and a new set of dishes, and 
a better house than this, and a private teacher 
for the children, and a piano, so Maggy and 
Kittie can take music lessons, and wants me to 
wear a nice suit of clothes on the street so folks 
will not think I am a mechanic, that I can take 
off, and put on old clothes in the shop ; and she 
wants me to get into some office, and into a 
respectable position in society." 

" What will it cost to satisfy her desires in this 
respect for appearances ? " 

" Several thousand dollars," 

" What do the children want ? " 

" They want everything they see. The boys 



76 Wanting too Much. 

want watches, rings, jewelry, good clothes and 
genteel places, where they can get good wages 
and have nothing much to do. The girls want 
nice shawls and new dresses, and fancy shoes, 
and to take lessons in dancing, and to have the 
house look nice like the house of a rich man a 
few doors from us, and they want me to promise 
that I will get what they all want, at once. I 
tell you, sir, I am worried to death by wants, 
and I must find some more lucrative employment ; 
so I want an ofhce- -one with good perquisites. 
Then I can get along." 

This Saturday night, alone in our library, 
closing the work of the week, it seems a duty to 
answer the man of many wants plainly, and as a 
brother should speak with brother. 

Such a man is a slave to his own weakness, 
lie is not fit to hold ofiice, for each member of 
liis family would be a constant tempter to dis- 
honesty. To have peace in his family and 



Wanting too Much. 77 

gratify foolisli wants, we fear he would soon 
become dishonest, and cause other people to suf- 
fer. The man is not master of his own house, 
much less of himself. His wife is a poor, weak, 
silly, selfish, and heartless woman, unfit to bring 
up a family of children. She does not deserve 
the honest, hard-working husband she has. She 
does not try to help him to be happy and com- 
fortable in his home, or to provide a fund in 
anticipation of a day of sickness or disaster. 
She continually complains. Her desire is only 
to make an appearance — to make people believe 
they are rich or dishonest. She has lost sight of 
the souls, the hearts, the minds of her children, 
and is educating the girls to false lives and to 
sell themselves to the highest bidder, as she is 
educating her boys to be dishonest, dishonorable 
men. Such wives drive good husbands to crime, 
to disgrace, to want. They start their girls on 
the insane road for silks, satins, laces, flounces, 
furbelows, nick-nacks, false hair, false bosoms, 



78 Wanting too Much. 

false color to tlieir cheeks, and all that army of 
useless wants, to gratify which, drive men to 
forgery and murder, and women to lives of 
shame and a market of their virtue, that tlieir 
bodies may be fashionably ornamented and attired. 
It is right for a man to gratify all the wants 
of life he can, without injury to others or to 
himself. It is the duty of a man to educate his 
children to usefulness, not to vain show, and to 
teach himself and his family to live within, that 
they may never be compelled to live without, 
their means. There are thousands of men being 
driven by their families to premature graves, as 
there are thousands of .wives who have no idea 
of the cost of money — of the worth of money, of 
the life-long struggle of their husbands to obtain 
it, and who live only to wear out a husband, 
shine above other women, and with the life 
insurance money realized by the death of a hus- 
band, have the means to flirt and start anew ou 
the road to ruin. 



Wanting too Much. 79 

He is not a good husband, a kind father, a 
provident provider who allows his family to tor- 
ment his life and his home with a continual 
importuning for the means to gratify idle wants. 
There should be reason in all things. The good 
man is firm and kind. He will see that he lives 
within his means, and tliat his children are 
taught to do likewise. He will guard the repu- 
tation of his wife, that she may not heedlessly 
through selfishness acquire the name of a heart- 
less wife and mother, who would sacrifice all 
there is noble, and good, and loviug, and honor- 
able in nature, for the gratification of fashion, 
and weakening of the mind and the degradation 
of true manhood or womanhood. 

Such wantonness of desire on the jjart of man 
or woman is an evidence of weakness. People 
educate their children in the art of deception 
and keeping up of appearances far more than in 
the art of becoming true men and women. It is 
not dress or fine houses that make men happy 



80 Wanting too Much. 

or women good. There is something beyond all 
this. It is the duty of every person to appear at 
all times, in dress and in mind, as well as they 
can consistently with their circumstances, but 
be^'ond this no honest person can or will go. 
The good father will help his children to weed 
out tlie imaginary from tlie actual wants. To 
do this is the fii-st lesson in honesty. Then he 
will be kind to his home ones. He will save his 
earnings to make his home pleasant, and to edu- 
cate his children to fill only honorable positions 
in life. The good wife will not be selfish, 
heartless, cruel to her husband and intent only 
on style, but will so live, and help her husband 
to live within his means that each may have a 
respect for the other, for without such full 
respect there never can be true, lasting love, but 
in place thereof, ruined homes, abandoned lives, 
dishonorable actions and degradation, all follow- 
ing, as hyenas follow an army — that invisible 
army of idle, useless wants. 





M^^j^^Megag^^^ 


gmj 


^g^o«^^[B^^^ 


^^^""""'^^^^^^ral £^^^ y^ 


s 


^^^m^^^^^L^ 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE WANTS OF THE RELEASED CONVICT. 




0-NIGHT, seated in our library, by 
the desk, before the fire, safe from 
the storm, we have been looking over 
the shadowy plains of the past, to see what became 
of all the boys and girls we knew as schoolmates. 
What a history 1 "What a variety of life experi- 
ences. How the old j)laymates are scattered. 
Some are dead to this world, because nnthonght 
of. Some have gone into obscurity. A few of 
the girls we knew are the wives of good hus- 
bands, while others are ragged, wretched slaves 
to men who wallow in poverty following their 

dissipations. One of our old chums married a 

4* 



82 The Wants of the Beleased Convict. 

girl wiio squandered all he could earn for her 
dress. Then to appear more stylish she received 
attentions and money from other men when he 
was from home. The husband was a church 
member. When convinced of the infidelity of 
his wife he wanted to go away and begin life 
anew alone. But the church said he must not ; 
that what God joined together no man should 
put asunder, lest religion come into ridicule. 
So he sKouldered his cross, bent his back to the 
burden — closed his eyes to what he could not 
LiClp, lest society be weakened ! At first he tried 
to drown his sorrow in labor, but in vain. Then 
he took to drink, and from its effects died. 

The neighbors said his wife killed him by her 
actions. But we always thought and said that 
the church was liis murderer, exactly as a great 
stout man w^ho found a poor lamb out in the cold 
freezing, and kept it there till it died would be a 
murderer. 

Another schoolmate became the wife of a 



The Wants of the Beleased Convict. 83 

fancy yoimg man who always attended shooting 
matches, horse-races, and other places where men 
were noisy and drank plenty. He was a young 
man who could live without work. A few 
months since we saw him. He is a confirmed 
beastly drunkard, dirty and abusive, supported 
by his once beautiful wife. For years he has 
beaten her and abused her shamefully. Once in a 
drunken fit he threw a kerosene lamp at her. It 
broke, set fire to the house, and they were driven 
homeless into the street. She supports her hus- 
band and two scrawny, ragged, scared-looking 
children by going from house to house to scrub 
and labor, as totally unlike her former sprightly, 
beautiful self as a skeleton is unlike a blushing 
bride. She has actually wept over her blighted 
life till her fountain of tears is dry, and she can 
weep no more. She, too, has been cursed by a 
drunken husband. Often has she wanted to go 
away ; to take her children where she could sup- 
port them, beyond the influence and abuse of 



84 The Wants of the. Released Convict. 

their father. But the church of which she is a 
member says thart wives must submit themselves 
to their husbands ; and if she dare rebel against 
church laws and seek by honest labor for life, 
liberty and the pursuit of happiness, she should 
be branded as an outcast. 

Poor woman ! The church to which she 
belongs owns her, and keeps her a victim in tor- 
ture, even as heartless boys keep flies and birds 
pinned or nailed to a tree to see how long their 
aeony will last before life gives out. 

What set us to thinking to-night of the old 
times was that just before starting from the office 
a middle-aged man entered the door and said to 
an office attendant that he wanted to see the 
writer hereof. On being shown to our private 
room the following conversation ensued : 

'* You do not remember me ? " 

^^No. What is your name \ " 

" You do not remember the boy who used to 
go with you to school, and who lived in the 



The Wants of the lleleased Convict. 85 

brown house wliere the cherry-trees and you 
were so well acquainted ? " 

" Yes, but you are not that person ? " 

" Indeed I am." 

" It does not seem possible ! You look to be 
twenty years the eldest — you have the same eyes, 
but you look used up." 

" So would you, had you been where I have 
been for seven years past." 

"Where is that?" 

" In State Prison." 

" You in State Prison ? What for % " 

" Grand larceny." 

" Surely, you must be jesting ? " 

" Indeed, I am not." 

" We never heard of it." 

" I was in under an assumed name." 

" Seven years in State Prison ! That is a long 
while." 

" It may seem a long while to you, but it was 
ten times longer to me. You try it once, and 
count the days as I have — two thousand five 



86 The Wants of the Released Convict. 

hundred and fifty-five days, shut up like a dog in 
a churn-mill." 

" What do you want now ? " 

" I want help ! That is what I want ! " 

" What kind of help ? " 

" I want money. I want food. 1 want clothes. 
I want a situation somewhere." 

" How long since you came out ? " 

" Four days." 

" Had you no money when you came out % " 

" Yes, I had twenty-two dollars." 

" What did you do with it ? " 

" I used six dollars for this coat ; four dollars 
to pay my fare here to see you, and the rest I have 
used up." 

" What on ? Wine or women ? " 

" Well, I've used it uj?, and now I want you to 
help me. You have a business and a reputation 
as a philanthropist, and I want to see what it all 
amounts to." 

" We cannot do it." 



The Wants of the Released Convict. 87 

" Why ? Because I have been in prison ? " 

" No ; more guilty men are out of prison tlian 
in." 

" Then, what is the reason ? " 

" Because you deserve no help as you demand. 
But four days since you were given freedom. 
In that time you have spent all your money for 
drink. Tour breath comes like the fumes of a 
pig-pen, hot and sickening. You are even now 
almost helplessly drunk. If you, on getting out 
of one trouble, want to rush into another, go it. 
Y"ou are old enough to know better. Drink has 
been the ruin of your life. When you were rich 
as an inheritor of property, we were sneered at 
by you for being a mechanic. 

" But that is nothing. Tou squandered while 
we toiled and earned. You lost several good sit- 
uations by your indulging in sprees. In one of 
those sprees you committed a crime, and have 
paid the penalty. Were you sober, not for the 
world would we ever call to mind your erroi', but 



88 The Wants of the Released Co7imct. 

you came out of one scrape, and the first thing 
you do is to fit yourself for another. It is use- 
less to lift to his feet a man who persists in wal- 
lowing in the gutter. You can have a supper, 
but nothing more till you come in such manner 
as to be an evidence that you wish to recover your 
manhood, and then you shall have assistance. 
Go, now, witli this young man, who will see that 
you have food ; then go where you spent your 
money for that which has made you drunk again 
and obtain employment of them." 

To-night we have been thinking of the old 
times ; of our duty to those who need help, and 
have thought, perhaps, we did not do right. The 
new year has begun with its trials! That man 
had been in prison. What of that ? Ilis debt 
against the law had been paid. He is better than 
thousands who ought to be in prison — who I'ob 
and steal when not in want or driven to it. Bet- 
ter than thousands who are out of prison only to 
live on the earnings of others — to abuse their 



The Wants of the Released Convict. 89 

wives and families. All there is of the good, the 
fresh and the pure is often dogged and dragged 
out of woman oversteeped in work and suffering. 
AVe cannot assist all, therefore it is our duty to 
first assist the poor, the unfortunate, the deserv- 
ing ones who are striving to help themselves for 
some good purpose. We all owe duties to each 
other, but every person owes a duty to himself. 

We feel sad to-night looking all about the 
room in which we write. All about our home, 
we see what labor and sobriety hath wrought and 
brought. Here is a cut-glass inkstand, made by 
a skilled artist. There, on the desk, is a fine 
metal watch-stand, curiously designed by a fel- 
low-laborer, while on it is a watch, ticking and 
telling us in a companionable way that it is 
almost midnight. By the side of it is a bronze 
sponge cup, from the top of which a model of a 
kitten looks down to see what is below. That 
too is the work of genius, one of God's associates 
in the work of progression. Right there is a 



90 The Wants of the Released Convict . 

match-safe of bronze, made to resemble a camion, 
against which sits a bronze soldier. So the desk, 
and a score of fancy articles thereon, tell us of 
workers, as do the hundreds of articles all in and 
about the house. All these tell us how much we 
are dependent upon others for that which makes 
life attractive, and how kind and thoughtful we 
should always be of the rights and the wants of 
our fellow-men. They tell what industry will do 
for any one who prefers to work for what he has, 
and to be independent of all save the mercies 
and the blessings from a Higher power, and they 
also tell how easy it is for a man who will, to 
surround himself with that which adds to his 
happiness, and proves his worth as a citizen and 
supporter of brother laborers, even as they in 
some way aid him. 

So we give that poor man our pity, and to 
sober workers and those who are victims of mis- 
fortune such assistance as we can. If men would 
care for themselves, they would need no assist- 



The Wants of the Released Convict. 91 

ance other than from those who minister to the 
sick and the dying. Why will not boys take bet- 
ter care of themselves ? We feel sad to think so 
many of them will not. Of a truth, those who 
will — those who dare be men, and to live to a 
good purpose, are the ones born to live in the 
gardens of the Eternal, while those who do not 
— who will not care for themselves, and so live as 
to develop the good rather than the bad, and the 
wasteful, and the vicious, must knock in vain 
when they first approach that door which is be- 
yond the boundary of this life and which opens 
at once to admit those who are master workmen. 
It is no use to feed one who is asleep. First 
let a man waken to know his wants, to realize his 
position, and to resolve to help himself. Mean- 
while let us all who have kind hearts and good 
wishes for those who suffer, see how the most 
good can be done, and see how much assistance we 
can give to all who are deserving, or trying to be 
deserving, when comes the next Saturday night. 



CHAPTER IX. 



HAVING A GOOD TIME. 




IIILE a cricket which came a few days 
ago to sing on the hearth has been 
chirping to-night we have been think- 
ing and thinking, and thinlcing what constitutes 
manhood and genuine nobility. If you never 
gave the subject much thought, suppose, earnest 
fellow-worker, that you think with us, and per- 
haps agree that none of us are perfect. In a dis- 
tant town lives a perfect specimen of manhood, 
as measured by the eye. He is a man, large, 
stout, handsome and rich. But he is very dis- 
honest. He is cross and quarrelsome, especially 
to all his home ones, with whom he lives to make 



Having a Good Time. 93 

them all feel that he is the great authority in all 
things, whose every wish must be gratified. We 
know another man who is smart, clever, talented 
and the father of a family of children. But he 
is coarse, profane and less attentive to the chil- 
dren of his house than he is to the horses and 
hogs by him considered only as property. Yet 
he would be called a specimen of perfect man- 
hood. 

We know another man who has a home which 
could be made a very happy one. In that home 
is a wife and three or four children, all of whom 
feel a deep love for him, the husband and father. 
But he cares very little for them. He spends 
his nights in places where crowds of men assem- 
ble to talk about horses and women — to drink 
and smoke — to tell smutty stories and set exam- 
ples which, followed by their children, would 
make them all vas-abonds. His home is but his 
eating-house; his wife the ever faithful cook, 
slave, nurse, washer and mender, expected to 



94 Having a Good Time. 

bring up her children to be ladies and gentlemen 
when she has no assistance from her husband, 
nor time to rest. Yet they call that man a splen- 
did fellow, and many a woman envies his heart- 
broken wife in having such a jolly fellow, so free 
with his money, for a husband. 

We have two acquaintances, each of whom 
claims to be a nice man. They are nearly of the 
same age. One is quite well off — the other in 
moderate circumstances. Neither of them is 
stingy. One is a worker and a thinker, wlule the 
other has a rich father who furnishes money so 
the son can live at his ease and have a good 
time. 

A few mornings since, by chance we met each 
of these acquaintances. Each had the night be- 
fore had a splendid time. We heard one of them 
telling a particular friend in the car what a glori- 
ous time he had. Said he : 

" We had a splendid time last night. Four of 
us in the party. We had a magnificent dinner at 



Having a Good Time. 95 

Brown's elegant new rooms. Brown keeps the 
best wines in the city. After dinner we played 
billiards till I won a hnndred dollars. Then we 
started out for a good time. We got in a car- 
riage and all went np to Rose Cottage, where we 
had two dozen bottles of wine, and the gayest 
time you ever saw. We shut the doors and had 
it all our own way. We upset a sideboard, split 
the piano cover, got every one in the cottage mad, 
then pleased again, when we ordered more wine, 
paid the damages, stayed there till four o'clock, 
and had a splendid time. It cost us about six 
hundred dollars for the night, all told, including 
breaking furniture." 

The otlier man, whom we met two hours later, 
had a story to tell, how he too had been out the 
night before having a good time. 

Said he : 

" Saturday night, after I was paid off, I put 
two dollars in my pocket and started out to 
enjoy myself. How^ do you suppose 1 did it ? " 



96 Having a Good Time. 

"Took a lady friend to some place of /n.ise- 
ment ? " 

"No — the snow was too deep." 

" Went back home ? " 

" No — not right av^ay." 

" How then ? " 

" I walked along up the Bowery, and when I 
saw poor little children, five to seven, eight or 
nine years old, looking into candy shops, press- 
hig their noses against the glass as if to smell of 
the good things within, I would give them pen- 
nies and tell them to go in and buy some. I 
sent more than fifty little ones in, or went in 
with them, then watched to see how they acted. 
Some ran home to tell somebody, and to divide, 
while others ate all the candy then and there, as 
though they never had tasted any of the material 
sweets of life before. 

" Then I took five old men who were out beg- 
ging, where for twenty cents each they had a 
better supper than they had eaten for many a 



Having a Good Time. 97 

week, then slipped out after I had paid a dollar 
for tliem, before they knew I had gone. I have 
not seen them since. What do you suppose they 
thought — fiv'e old beggars who were strangers to 
the other. But I had the best time in a little 
dirt}' place on Baxter street, after I turned off 
from the Bowery. I found three old women in 
a cellar, sewing on coarse undershirts, by the 
light of a smoky kerosene lamp. In a half- 
starved grate or place where had been one once, 
a few bits of coal and cinders were throwing out 
warmth enough for them to warm their fingers by 
from time to time, as they worked almost night and 
day to earn each sixty cents a week. As I stood 
looking at them I thought — ' Suppose one of those 
poor old women were my mother ! Well, most 
likely each of them is somebody's mother, or was 
somebody's mother, or had a mother once, whose 
love and care they miss.' 

'• Then I went to a grocery near by and bought 

a dollar's worth of coal and took it to them. 
6 



98 Having a Good Time. 

" ' Here is yonr coal ! ' 

" You ought to have seen them ! They all 
declared it was not their coal— that they had not 
ordered any — they never had even hoped to be 
able to order so much. I told them it was 
theirs sure, for a man had said so." I laughed 
at them, when one of them said: 

" ' Please, good sir, don't fool us ! It is bad 
enough to be old and poor, without being made 
sj^ort of by young men. Once I had coal to give 
to the poor, but it is a long time since then, sir. 
It is not for us, so please take it away.' 

" Somehow I could not keep the tears from 
my eyes, as I thought of their waiting in the cold 
for the good angel death to come and take them 
to a new and beautiful home, and I said : 

" ' It is all yours. It was bought for you, and 
I brought it. Let me put some on the grate, and 
so it will be warmer here,' 

" Two of the old women put their work down 
and looked at me, then at each other. The one 



Having a Good Time. 99 

I had been talking with put her hands on my 
shoulders, looked me in the face with her sad, 
large eyes, and as the tears ran down over her 
cheeks, said in a trembling voice : 

" ' You do not know how you have warmed 
all our hearts. We all thank you, and I 
will pray that good angels will always come to 
you, as you have come to us to-night, the first 
of my home with these two poor creatures, who, 
when I was turned out of the last and only 
shelter I had left, told me to come and live with 
them.' 

"That was all she said, for the tears came so 
fast she could say no more. I hurried out, the 
tears in my eyes too. Then I went to the 
grocery and bought a loaf of bread, a piece of 
dried beef, a little tea and some apples, and sent 
them in by a boy, while I stood out in the 
snow to look in. When he took the things down 
the steps and into the little cellar room, I could 
hear him tell them that a man had sent them in. 



100 JJaving a Good Time. 

and could see the old woman who had talked to 
me put her head down on the edge of the box 
they used for a table, but I could not tell 
whether she was crying or praying. 

" How I came to go there is more than I 
know, but 1 am not sorry. I did not need the 
two dollars I spent first, nor the rest I put with 
it, nor do I know who were the happiest, the 
little children, the five old men who Were 
begging, or the three old women who were work- 
ing, or myself. Nor did I know how much good 
could be done with a little money, nor how little 
one feels its absence when gone to make hearts 
lighter." 

The cricket is again chirping on the hearth as 
it was when we began to write. The watch says 
the noon of night is almost here, and that after 
the busy labor of the week it is time to rest, as 
we pray all the poor little children, and all who 
suffer, will in peace and forgetfulness of the 



Having a Good Time. 101 

sorrows and hardships of the past, when the 
doors open and there is an entering into the joy, 
the surprise, the feasting and the happiness there 
is awaiting all who live to benefit others, when in 
the gardens of the Leal we enter after our final 
Saturday night." 




CHAPTER X. 



WHAT A SELFISH MOTHER DID. 




FEW cla^'S ago, while passing through 
one of the many hospitals in this city, 
accompanied by a kind physician, the 
superintendent of the place said that a patient 
in an adjoining ward could not live long, and 
asked us to step in and see her. On a bed, 
propped up by pillows, her pale face and ema- 
ciated cheeks telling of consumption and its 
ravages, lay a woman about twenty-five years old. 
One of her hands, like that of a skeleton, rested 
on the white counterpane ; the other held a 
bright red rose some one had given her, in 



What a Selfish Mother Did. 103 

striking contrast with the white skin which cov- 
ered the ruckle of bones of the hand, once so 
phimp and beautiful. In response to the kindly 
worded inquiry of the physician, a slight flush 
reached her cheek, and the light of life glim- 
mered and flickered in her dark, lustrous eyes, 
as if endeavoring to beat back the coming 
shadow, she said : 

" Only a little while and I shall be free and at 
rest." 

" Yours has been a weary life ; are you loath to 
part with it ? " 

"Ko, indeed. Uncared for, wrongly guided 
and heart-broken, I have nothing left to live for 
but death and a new effort, if such thing can be." 

After a few more words the physician was 
called to administer to a patient elsewhere, say- 
ing he would return for us. Seated by the bed- 
side of the sufferer in mind and body, as she was 
waiting on the shore of the new Time, we lis- 
tened to the history of her life, told calmly and 



104 What a Selfish Mother Did. 

as her ebbing strength would permit. And tlins 
ran her recital : 

"It is right vou should know it. From my 
failure you may write words which will benefit 
others. Beautiful flowers sometimes grow over 
the graves of the poor as of the rich, and 
untrained vines may have as much medicinal 
virtue therein as have those most carefully 
watched. Once 1 had a home in the country. 
But it never was a real happy home. My father 
meant well, but he was cold, heartless to all 
save his horses and hunting dogs. All of us 
children were afraid of him. When he came in 
doors all play and merry-making ceased. It was 
his house ; his farm ; his mill ; his horses ; his 
dogs ; liis money ; his home ; his friends ; his 
profits ; his servants ; his wife ; his children. 
On all occasions, as he talked to others, every- 
thing was his. He made all of us, mother, and 
brothers, and sisters, feel that he alone had the 
right to an interest in whatever was in, and 



What a Selfish Mother Did. 105 

around and of our home, and that we, his home- 
ones, were of the least consequence of all. . 

" Then I was not so handsome as my sisters or 
my brothers. My mother was much like my 
father. She too was cold and selfish. I think 
he made her so by his life and ignoring of her 
as a partner. She came to look upon herself as 
isolated. She grew more and more selfish, and 
heart-wrapped in fashion. We had plently to 
eat and to wear, only we were all so heart- 
hungry. Often have I felt bad seeing my father 
pet and caress his horses and his dogs, then turn 
to give orders to his children. 

" My mother loved dress. She was a proud, 
haughty, selfish woman, whose hobby was pro- 
priety. She belonged to a church, and lived to 
attend service, to wear fine dresses, and to keep 
up appearances. She did not like me because I 
was not beautiful. When I was a little child she 
would shove me away from her and tell me she 

hated me because I was not so pretty as my 
5* 



106 What a SelfisTi Mother Did. 

sistei'S. She would tell me anything was good 
enough for me, I was so homely. Then she 
would take my sisters with her, all dressed in 
their fineries, and tell them how pretty they 
were. If I wept because of her feelings toward 
me then she would punish me, aad tell her visitors 
tliat 1 was a naughty, homely, bad girl, and that 
she was ashamed of me, and her visitors would 
say, ' Isn't it a pity she is not pretty % '. or ' I'd 
send her oif to school,' or something of that sort. 
'^ I was frozen out from my mother's heart. 
There came a tired, wearying, dead load to my 
heart. Day by day I was made to feel that I 
was not loved. My sisters called me homely 
and took pains to tell me how much nicer their 
dresses were than mine. When I had trouble I 
had no one to go to. My father never thought 
of me, except when I was in his way. My 
mother had smiles for others, but none for me. 
At last, as I learned how cold and selfish, and 
heartless she was, I grew away from her, and was 



W/iat a Selfish Mother Did. 107 

glad she did not love me. In time my life 
became unbearable. I left home because it was 
not a home. In the night I ran away and came 
on the cars to this city. Then I changed my 
name, and sought work everywhere. At last I 
found a place in a candy store at four dollars a 
week wages. I paid all of that for board and 
washing. How I was expected to live and dress 
myself well on such wages I do not know. 
After a few months my clothes became shabby. 
One day the proprietor of the store was told by 
his wife that I did not dress well enough to draw 
custom. Then he told me if I did not wear 
better clothes I must leave. Then I told him 
just the truth, and he said he'd see about it in a 
day or two. That night he remained in the store 
after the others had gone, and said he wanted to 
talk with me. lie wanted me to go out with him 
to a concert the next Sunday night. I went 
with him because he talked so good and kind to 
me. It was a concert in the church. He was a 



108 W7iat a Selfish Mother Did. 

church member. He said it helped his business 
to belong to the chm-ch. He furnished candies, 
and suppers for parties and made money. "We 
went to the concert. He gave me twenty dollars 
as we came back to where I boarded. I bought 
some new clothes. He was very kind to me, and 
gave me more money. His wife was satisfied 
with me, and said I did well to use my money 
for dress. 

" One night I went out to walk with him to 
see a cousin, as he said. At her house, we were 
alone in a room together. I do not know how it 
was, but we had a supper together. After sup- 
per, I felt very queer and dizzy, and reckless. 
When I left his cousin's house, I was ruined. 
He gave me more money, and said he would do 
right by me. I believe I loved him because he 
was kind to me. Yet he had ruined me. Night 
after night I cried myself to sleep, thinking of 
my home, of my father, of my mother, and wish- 
ing I were a dog or a horse so that my father 



What a Selfish Mother Did. 109 

would love me ; or a new silk dress, or article of 
jewelry instead of a homely child, so that my 
motlier would love me. 

" After a few months I had to leave there. 
The man said I could not stay longer. I went 
away, but could get no work. Then I pawned 
all the articles he had given me, and the things I 
had purchased with his money. So I got along 
till my baby was born. I lived in a garret on 
crusts. My baby was taking to a foundling home, 
and I have seen it but a few times. It is better 
that I do not. The poor little thing thinks its 
father was a soldier, and its mother with him is 
dead. 

" When I got well, what could 1 do ? I had no 
money. Weak and heart-crushed I walked from 
house to house for work. I had no recommends ; 
women would not talk with me. Some said I 
was drunk, because I was too weak to walk 
straight ; others said I drank because my eyes 
were red from weeping. Christians looked at 



110 What a Selfish Mother Bid. 

elm roll spires, but not at the poor, as did the 
Saviour. The Law was against me. I heard once 
from home that I had been cursed because I had 
left. Once I went to a minister's study, and 
asked his advice. He said : 

" ' Go out and go away quickly, for if you are 
seen here I am ruined in reputation.' 

" Twice I called on noted Christian women to 
beo; of them for some work or to find me some 
place where I could scrub floors or do the most 
menial service, but they were too good to talk 
with me, and drove me from their doors. What 
could I do? There was suicide or starvation — 
the city of the dead or the city of the living ! 
I threw }nyself upon the latter, till at last I am 
here to enter the confines of the former. 

" But I am not bad. Every step for years has 
been on points of agony. The crown of thorns 
on the head of the Saviour was not more painful 
than the crown of grief on my heart, planted 
there in early childhood by my mother, and 



What a Selfish Mother Bid. Ill 

pressed deeper and deeper into the sensitive soul 
by that society to please whicli I was first cruci- 
fied. My life was wrecked long since. But 
there was a cause for it. Never went a girl to 
study the streets of the town unless slie bad a 
cause for thus turning her steps. In a little 
while I shall be a beginner in the new life, where 
I know I shall be forgiven, for I have in tears 
and contrition forgiven those who drove me 
forth, and those who were not brave enough, 
when they had the power, to help and to save me 
to a life of usefulness. Tell my mother that I 
forgive her, even for driving me from her heart, 
then from home, and thus to the life which has 
brought me here ; and when you pray, forget 
not those who suffer beyond their strength." 




1 


^s 




w 


^p 


^B 


M 





CHAPTER XI. 



^fJIY NOT TET TO BE A MAN? 



^ 



ETWEEIST twenty and thirty years 
ago, when we were a happy, hope- 
ful farmer boy, a man came to the 
neighborhood where we were brought up, and 
purchased a few acres of land, on which grew 
trees and briers. One day, while hunting for 
wintergreen berries in the woods, we came upon 
the new comer busy at work cutting down trees, 
that the ground might be cleared away and a 
home made there. Said he : 

" My little man, will you do me a favor? " 
" Yes sir, if I can. What do you want ? " 
"I am very thirsty. Will you empty the 



W7iy not Tnj to he a Man f 113 

berries from your little tin-pail out on the top 
of that stump, and go to the spring down there 
and bring me a pail of good, cold water 1 " 

" Yes sir, with pleasure." 

After emptying the berries, as directed, we 
scampered away and in two or three minutes 
had returned with a pail filled with water. The 
man whirled his axe deep into the wood, left 
it sticking there, sat down upon a log, wiped the 
perspiration from his brow, then took a long drink 
from the pail filled with cold, clear spring water. 

" There ! That is the stuff— the best stuff in 
the world when a man or boy is thirsty. I 
thank you, my little man. When I get my 
house built here, come and take dimier with 
me, and I'll wait on you ! " 

" Are you going to build a liouse 'way up 
here in the woods ? " 

'' Yes — soon as I have a place for it cleared 
off, and the trees and limbs all burned and out 
of the way." 



114: TTAy not Tnj to le a Man ? 

" Have you any children ? " 

" Yes, I have three, and they will be here 
when my house is built. So will their mother, 
and you can come and visit us then ! " 

While he rested, we talked. Somehow he 
seemed like a real good, heartsome man. He 
asked questions ; told us about his boys and 
girls ; ate a few of the berries we gave him as 
we put them from the stump back into the pail, 
and then went again to his work, while we went 
our way. All that afternoon we heard the 
echoing sound of blows from his axe. Occa- 
sionly a tree crashed down to the earth. Then 
the talk of the axe would be heard again. 
Day after day he worked there. At times he 
would come to our home to talk and rest awhile 
after the work of the day was done. The open- 
ing grew wider and longer day by day till two 
acres of ground had been chopped over, the 
trees cut into logging lengths, and the brush cut 
and piled into heap)s. Then the man went away. 



WJiy not Try to he a Man ? 115 

One day in the early summer we saw clouds 
of smoke up there on the hill-side. Then the 
flames leaped and crackled, as fire was consum- 
ing the piles of dry brush. He was a worker — 
he made it red-hot up there, and left the spot 
where his labor had been given black and 
unsightly. In a few days we saw men and 
yokes of oxen up there at work to roll the logs 
into piles at the lower edge of his clearing, that 
they might be burned in time. Then we saw 
a man with a plough drawn by oxen — and before 
winter the green blades of winter wheat came 
out of the blackness of the soil with a promise 
to reward the one who had pioneered his way 
to break down the old and build up the new. 

In time our friend had builded a house, and 
his home was made. One day we took dinner 
there, while still a lad. not yet in teens, and saw 
how nicely he had all things fixed about him. 
The house had been erected close by the spring. 
The rooms in the house Avere neat and clean 



116 WJiij not Try to he a Ifanf 

as a tidy housewife could make, and a ueat 
family could keep them. The man had a beau- 
tiful, happy home. He had made it by hard 
work — he was a builder; one of God's noble- 
men, and one who gave good examples. 

Now, he is a great farmer of wealth. His 
sons have grown to useful manhood. His 
daughter graces the home of one of the thriving 
mei-chants of this city, and is to-day the same 
sweet, noble, sensible, earnest woman as was her 
mother. Last summer we met the old farmer, 
who now is able to travel over the country, see 
the people, note improvements and live at ease. 
Speaking of the old time, the first work of the 
clearing, his large, well-tilled farm and beautiful 
home, he said : 

" Yes, there is a wide difference between now 
and then. My farm and home are as I planned 
and worked to make them, and I feel that I 
have not lived in vain." 

That is what he said. His exact words. 



Why not Tnj to he a Man ? 117 

Search the books — find a sentence more filled 
with evidences of a great, true, powerful man- 
liood if you can. But you will hunt in vain. 
His farm and his home as he had made them ! 
He had not lived in vain ! Indeed he had not. 
Two nobler men than are his sons — two happier 
husbands and fathers cannot be found. The 
good example their father set has been honored. 



To-night, as we were preparing to leave the 
office, a man entered, with coat-collar muffled 
close about his face. There seemed something 
about him familiar. Walking up to the counter 
he introduced himself, and said : 

" Of course you know me. I have been in 
your Western office when you were there, many 
times. I am so glad to see you. I said to my- 
self to-day, says I, ' If I could only see you it 
would be all right,' I know you won't ' go 
back ' on an old friend, will you ? " 



118 Why not Tnj to he a Mem f 

"AVhatistlie trouble?" 

" I want a hundred dollars. Want to borrow 

it. Will pay it some day. You have got it and 

can spare it, and won't go back on an old friend, 

I know. I want to go back to Chicago." 
" How long have you been in New York ? " 
" Two weeks, and I want to go back to 

Chicago." 

" Why don't you go ? " 

" Why ? I am out of money." 

" Where is your family — wife and babies ? " 

" They are in Chicago, and I want to go back 

there." 

" Where is your baggage ? " 

" It's all in pawn, and I am dead broke ! " 

" How long have you been on this spree ? " 

" Who told you I had been on a drunk ? " 

" You tell me — your eyes, bloodshot and 

inflamed ; your parched, swollen lips ; your hot, 

swillish breath." 

" O, come now, you are rough ! I didn't come 



Whj not Try to he a Man? 119 

for a lecture — I want a hundred dollars until I 
can earn it and pay you back." 

" You cannot have it." 

" Do you mean it ? Why not %'\ 

" For several reasons." 

" What are they ? " 

" Tou are not deserving of it. We do not 
have it to spare. You are fonr years older than 
we are, and are just as much bound to take 
care of yourself as we are to take care of you. 
When you had money, you went on a spree — 
have been on a drunk for ten days. You kept 
it up till you had squandered all you had, and 
now want to go home, sick, fevered, filled with 
poison, to be nursed by your wife, who for years 
has been cursed and held on the hot gridiron of 
torture on your account, as this is a common trick 
of yours. What does a woman want of the 
fevered dregs of a drunken carouse ? Why 
should we work here for two weeks to earn a 
liundred dollars to give you as pay for your two 



120 Why not Try to he a Man ? 

weeks making a fool of yourself ? You are a man. 
Of mature years and of good intellect. You 
even claim to be smart. You have a family, and 
will not care for them. We have a family, and 
intend to provide our home-ones with such com- 
forts as they deserve. You pleased yourself in 
getting drunk, and you can please yourself in 
getting sober. You spent your earnings foolishly, 
— now go to work and earn more money, and 
tlien go and spend that for drink and in haunts 
of vice if you want to. This is your privilege. 
This is a free country. Get into the gutters and 
stay there, if such is the restiiig-place you choose. 
We have something else to do besides working 
to reward men for not taking care of them- 
selves." 

" You are mighty rough ! You would not 
dare talk to me this way if I was not in hard 
luck. I don't want a temperance lecture — I 
want a hundred dollars ! " 

" We are not so rough to you as you are to 



Why not Try to he a Man fj I'il 

yourself! You are your own guardian. How- 
can you ask us to be better to you than you are 
to yourself % Had you been taken ill — met with 
an accident, or been robbed, we would help you, 
if in our power. But when you deliberately roh 
yourself^ you are a coward to ask any man to 
help you suffer the consequences." 

"I don't like such talk!" 

" Then deserve better. You are your own 
master. But you need being wakened. H you 
cannot buy experience to suit you with money, 
obtain it from the want of mouey. You had 
things your way in spending your money — have 
it all your own way in recovering it, without let, 
help or hindrance. The man who will not take 
care of himself when he can, is not worth taking 
care of when he can't." 

The man went his way, but where we do not 
know. 

Boys ! — you who live in country as well as in 

city homes — tell us what you think of the two 
6 



122 Why not Try to he a Man ? 

men told of. One of tliem planned and worked 
to make for himself and family a home. lie 
sncceeded, and did it by work and economy. 
Now he can rest, and be happy. The other 
man has hewed out his resting-place. His life is 
as he has made it. He is on the road which leads 
to a miserable old age, and a pauper grave. 
Which of the two men would you be ? We are 
not giving you a lecture on Temperance, but we 
would have you realize that your future rests 
with yourselves. You can build homes or gutters 
to live in. 

The man who subdued a portion of the forest 
will enter the Gardens of God a full life-time in 
advance of the creature of dissipation, who has 
no care for others nor of himself. The one will 
be called to councils of the spirits — of men re- 
born to a real life, while the other will be a 
wanderer on the shore and a beggar for know- 
ledge, till the mind, which is the man, has been 
strengthened and tautiht that which the man 



Why not Try to he a Man f 123 

should have learned here on earth. He will en- 
ter the new life worse off than when he entered 
this, for his mind will be weak where it might 
have been strong— it will be like the rough 
bowlder fallen from the mountain side to the 
plain below, when by care and study he might 
have been like a beautiful piece of living sculp- 
ture, walking with those on the heights who are 
pressing on through all the millions of Eternal 
colleges lining the way to the Great Master, who 
will welcome all good workmen no matter what 
their religion, when they shall come to him in 
the life of love and progressive knowledge 
beyond the welcome Saturday Night. 




CHAPTER XII. 



A TEUE PIIILOSOPHEK. 




|0-DAT we have really enjoyed a visit 
from a farmer, whose home is several 
hundred miles from here, and who 
came to the city now for the first time in his life. 
Some " wise " people sneer at farmers, and say 
they know nothing. Others turn up their noses 
at them, and consider the tillers of the soil and 
the makers of the country but little better than 
the cattle they drive. It is an old saying — " An 
honest man is the noblest work of God." And 
where do you find honest men if not in the 
country, in the rural districts — on the farms and 
in the happy homes made beautiful by labor ? 



A True Pidlosopher. 125 

It is years since we left the furrow and the pets 
of the farm for the more laborious and perplex- 
ing work of the sanctum ; yet the attractions of 
a life in the country, the memories of the past 
and the hope some day to rest and in quiet to see 
the sun set behind life's western hills never will 
leave us. All-powerful are the early lessons of 
childhood, as pictures are graven on the tablet of 
life before the heart and the hope are marred, 
scarred and made rough by constant contact with 
events and struggles to live and to preserve that 
honesty of purpose which clothes true manhood 
and protects it on the voyage to the mellow-tinted 
gardens of the Leal. 

Said our visitor to-day : 

" This then is your workshop ? The place 
where you do your work. You scatter good seed 
over much ground. You sow truth and indepen- 
dent thought broadcast, as we farmers do wheat, 
and deserve rich rewards. But are you not often 
weary % " 



126 A True Philosopher. 

" YeSj at times very weary. But are we not 
commanded by that kind and Supreme Being 
who is our Father in Heaven to work while the 
day lasts and to be faithful in earnest efforts ? " 

" Tes, yes ; but how can you think, here in the 
noise — in the uproar and tumult of a driven life ? 
Why, the noise distracts me, and it seems as if 
all the people I meet are going crazy in their 
desire to do business — to make money — to outrun 
their neighbors. How can you think to write ? " 

" Discipline and application. It is as easy to 
work here when there is work to do, as for a boy 
to drive a team through the streets of a village 
when he knows where he wants to go and is in- 
tent more on reaching his destination than merely 
seeing the sights." 

"Yes, I understand. But I would not ex- 
change places with you, unless for the chance to 
do more good here than I can do at home. Your 
city life bothers me. There is too little heart in 
it. Too much fashion. Too much attention to 



A True Philosopher. 127 

dress and appearance. In the woods, we can tell 
what kind of a tree it is we are standing under, 
but here in the city it seems as if the timber was 
all veneered to hide what was inside." 

" Yery true, sir. Veneering is the order of 
the day. Our country is being veneered by cor- 
ruption as the people are rushing all too blindly 
after wealth." 

" Yes, that is the trouble. And I like to see 
the veneering stripped off, that we may know the 
true from the false, and, for one, I have come to 
thank you for what you are doing. Politically" 
we do not agree, but I have tired of politics, and 
have learned to look beneath such pretexts for 
power, and join with any one who is lionest, for 
now there is more than ever a work for honest 
men to do. You are younger than I by half a 
lifetime ; but there is work we can both engage 
in. Wlien you are weary here come to my home 
and rest. Come and gather strength for the com- 
ing conflict. Men do not last so long in the city 



128 A True PliilosojpTier. 

as in the country. Last week I was seventy -four 
years old, and now I am well and hearty as ever. 
You men in cities work too fast. You want to 
do everything in one day. You abuse the gifts 
you should preserve. You live too much in har- 
ness. Eest more, and live longer, that you may 
do more good. 

" Now, I have a home in the country. There 
is no such wealth there as here, but no such pov- 
erty do we have to witness. We have fresh air, 
good friends, truer friendship. I have a home in 
the country. For fifty-three years I liave worked 
to make my home, and to make it beautiful. I 
have wronged no man. Labor has brought abun- 
dant reward. Children have grown up around 
me in whom I am proud, for they are good, and 
kind, and loving, and bring only joy to my heart. 
The morning and the evening are not fringed 
with regrets, or torn with pictures of dissipation 
about our home in the country. Houses are not 
kept locked and double locked by day and by 



A True PhilosopJier. 129 

night, nor do uniformed officers of the law patrol 

up and down in front of my house as they do 

here. My sons grew to manhood away from the 

sights and scenes of city life which harden hearts 

and lead men to dishonest acts, false lives and 

premature graves. My daughters have grown to 

be women, good, pure and full of sympathy for 

all who are in distress. We have all learned to 

work and thus to preserve our health, and are not 

slaves to that army of imaginary wants which, to 

gratify, drive men and women to poverty, and 

nations to ruin. 

" When you are weary come to our home in the 

country, where birds have their freedom ; — where 

flowers bloom in season, and where it is not a 

crime to think or to have ideas befitting many 

men of many minds. Where Christianity is not 

bound in the silken cords of fashion, and where 

church spires are not the thermometer falsely 

indicating the attitude of the soul, as in cities 

where men and women live too much for appear- 
6* 



130 A True Philosopher. 

ances and too little for the development of the 
good, the great, and the ennobling." 

Thns talked our aged visitor, who now has re- 
turned to his home in the country, to enjoy his 
sunset. His talk was of men and of manhood, 
as his life has been one of honor and profit. He 
has lived his life in one of the rural homes of the 
land, and has lived it well, creating and enjoying 
blessings unhedged by envy and untainted with 
dishonor, as can all the boys and young men who 
may read these lines, and who have their own 
honor, prosperity and manhood in their own keep- 
ing, away from the pitfalls and the temptations 
which so beset the young in large cities, from 
Sunday morning till Saturday night. 





CHAPTEK XIII. 



HOW THE POOR BOY CAME TO BE KICH. 




IGHTEEN years ago to-niglit '. 



It does not seem so long, but there 
can be no mistake. We were sitting 
in one of tbe depots of the Erie Railway waiting 
for an eastern-bound train of cars on which a 
yomig friend was to take passage for the great 
city of New York. He had just entered on his 
fifteenth year, and had already learned to look 
fate in the face, and to believe that his destiny 
and future, so far as this life was concerned, 
rested much with himself. As we sat on a 
bench, waiting for the train, we remember the 
little talk we had as though it were but a year 
ago. 



133 How the Pool' Boy came to he Rich. 

" What will yon do in New Tork, Henry ? " 

" Anything that is honorable, no matter how 
hard' the work. And I'll try to take care of 
myself, too." 

" But suppose you find nothing to do ! " 

"Then I'll hunt till I do find a place. I'll 
find somebody who is afraid of work, and when 
he quits I'll take his place." 

" That is a good idea. But what do you want 
to do well for?" 

"I want to see how well I can do for my 
own satisfaction, and I want to have a nice 
home some day for Maggie. You know we 
are willing to wait for each other. Her mother 
says we will know whether we love each other 
or not by the time I ain of age, and so it is 
fixed that we are to wait. I am a year the 
eldest, and it seems that I am a man, now that 
I have a hope, and an object in life to strive for." 

Just then the whistle of the steam was heard 
as the train came rushing around a curve, dashed 



How the Poor Boij came to he Rich. 133 

lip to the station, was stopped long enough for a 
few persons to step off and others to step on the 
cars. In a moment our boy friend had gone — 
passed on towards the east. The train plunged 
into the darkness and rushed on to the city 
beyond, where our friend knew he would find 
friends, for he went forth with good intentions, 
determined to deserve them. 

To-night we were an invited guest at the 
beautiful home of one of the merchants of this 
city. A neat, well-built, good-sized, finely 
furnished brick house near the Central Park. 
After dinner, as we were seated in his library, 
we listened attentively as he said : 

" Yes, times have changed with both of us 
since that night. Providence has been good to 
me, and I have tired to be good to myself. There 
is more in being good to yourself than people 
think for. I had it pretty hard for quite awhile 
after reaching the city. It was no easy matter 



134 How the Poor Boy came to he Rich. 

to find a place, no matter how vigilant the watch 
for places or how many attempts to find a posi- 
tion. For awhile I slept in the depot on a 
bench, and helped the night-watchman sweep 
out, to pay for the lodging. Then I carried 
valises for passengers, and made something in 
that way. Then I was sick, and was taken to 
St. Luke's Hospital. When I got out, my old 
friend the watchman was dead — the new one 
would not let me sleep on the bench, and as it 
came warm weather I slept in a warehouse on 
the floor. After awhile a man drove me out 
from there, called me a vagabond because I was 
poor and had no home, and hit me on the head 
witli a sort of iron cane he had, cutting a hole in 
my scalp, and causing that scar. A gentleman 
passing, in company with a lady, stopped to talk 
to me, as I sat on a curb-stone, too faint to walk. 
He took me to a hotel in the Bowerj^, and paid 
the landlord for my lodging and breakfast, then 
took me to a drug-store on the coi'ucr close by 



How the Poor Boy came to he Rich. 135 

and told the druggist to put something on my 
head, and told me when that was done to go to 
bud, and, after breakfast, to come to his office, 
lie was a lawyer on Nassau street, and his name 
was Hamilton. He was very kind. I swept his 
office, did errands, and kept the place neat and 
clean. He paid my board, and gave me a 
dollar a week. After a few months he got me 
a place in a store, as a boy of all work, who 
wanted to learn the business. 

" I had it pretty hard here, but no more so 
than the rest of the persons employed there. 
But I was not afraid of work. My employer 
Iiere was veiy kind and good to me. He was 
never cross or ugly. He must have been a poor 
boy himself some day, as, indeed, he had been. 
When I saw that he was kind to me, and always 
explained to me what I did not then know, I 
tried my very best to please him. When he saw 
that I was always anxious to do all I could, he 
kept pushing me forward, to see, as he said, 



136 How the Poor Boy came to he Rich. 

what kind of stuff I was made of. He gave me 
some severe trials, and sometimes it seemed as if 
I must give up. 

" Then I thought of my poor boyhood. Of 
Maggie, and how she was waiting for me. And 
of the future, and the reward I wanted it to 
bring. And of Maggie's mother — and of my 
mother, who always was so good to me — and of 
my poor father, who was in poor health, and with 
a heavy family load to bear — and of the neigh- 
bors, who had said I never could succeed in a 
great city. 

'* The more I thought of all these things the 
harder I tried. When I did not clearly under- 
stand what to do, I asked my employer, and he 
would tell me. So I made but few mistakes. 

" You see I wanted to be somebody. I tried 
to be. I wanted to know what I was good for. 
When other clerks went out to drink and to 
smoke, I remained in the store and worked. 
What wages were paid to me were saved, and 



How the Poor Boy came to he Rich. 137 

deposited in a savings bank. When the work of 
the day was done, I went to the house where I 
boarded, and read or studied. Then I went to 
bed early as possible, and was always at the office 
the followino; morning, fresh and rested. At the 
end of a year my employer said he would give 
me twice the wages he did the first year. Then 
I put into the work all the more. At the end of 
the second year he again raised my salary, and 
the day I was twenty -one years of age he invited 
me home to dine with him, and gave me a per- 
centage on all the goods I could sell from his 
store. 

" After that the work waa easier. I made 
money. I tried my best to be polite and atten- 
tive, and think no one can say with truth that I 
was ever gruff, curt, unkind, or that I ever used 
a harsh or profane word or expression. 

" I never spent my time in saloons, for I 
wanted to save the money for Maggie. Had I 
squandered my time, the business would not 



138 How the Poor Boy came to he Hich. 

have been learned — my kind employer would 
have lost interest in me — I should have become 
a bundle of bad, expensive habits, and many of 
the pictures and beautiful articles my wife has 
bought and here placed about would never have 
been ours. 

" I wanted to be a man. To be a succcessf ul 
man. To have a home and a business. To see 
wdiat I could make of myself, and so I did my 
best — not once or twice, hut all the time. When 
I went back home to marry Maggie she looked 
so glad and proud — all the more so, because she 
knew that many a man and woman there had 
said I never could amount to much of anything 
in the world. And the neighbors seemed to take 
an interest in me. The reward began to come — 
and it kept coming right along, little by little 
but constantly coming. 

" Now we have a nice home. It is all ours. 
My old employer is still a silent partner in our 
business, and we get along excellently well. We 



How the Poor Boy came to he Rich. 139 

live here, as you see — Maggie and the three little 
ones, and I — all happy and contented. Business 
is good, for in the store we all try to make it 
so. We sell the best of goods, and never take 
advantage of a customer. We are too anxious to 
keep up the good reputation of our concern. I 
try to do by all the clerks as my employer did 
by me, and when I can assist one to a better 
place or position, or can assist him to start in 
business, it is a pleasure to do as I was done by 
years ago. 

" I do not know as I can tell you how I have 
succeeded — only that I tried to — that I took care 
of myself — that I always did my best, and never 
stopped to doubt the result." 

Boys — what that man has done, all of you can 
do. He took care of himself. He had hope and 
a disposition to work. He was kind to others, 
and worthy the love of the pure country girl who 
had faith in the one her young heart had selected, 
and thus the two grew into glorious, useful man- 



140 How the Poor Boy came to he Rich. 

hood and woinanliood, as they are even now- 
growing in mind and strength, the better to enter 
as perfect workers upon the duties of that new 
life, in the Eternal City, beyond the darkness 
of present time, after we shall have wakened to 
the new and the beautiful, beyond the Vroary 
Saturday Night. 



CHAPTER Xiy. 



SEEKING THE SUNSHINE. 




IhIS afternoon we learned a lesson 
from a little black and white kitten. 
ISTot a poor little abused creature, 
kicked and cuffed and starved by children, who 
believe that kittens, no matter how innocent, 
were ordained to be tortured for being kittens 
by those who are in turn some time to be tor- 
tured for being human ! This was a pretty 
little house-pet, with a clean coat of fur, a little 
red ribbon about its neck, and its pert, saucy 
ways seeming to crop out as thanks for the care 
and attention given it. Vov awhile it played 
about the floor, attracting attention and making 



142 Seeking the Sunshine. 

resting-places for one's thoughts, then it found 
a spot of sunshine a little larger than itself, on 
the carpet, and curled itself down nicely for a 
sleep. 

In a little while we looked and saw that the 
golden spot of sunshine had moved on, and just 
then the kitten moved to rest in the gentle 
warmth. In a little while the spot and the 
kitten had again moved, tlie lesser following 
the greater. Do you ever think how full of 
lessons a day can be ? What lessons there are 
in little things ? One person passes along the 
street in a hurry to reach his place of business, 
and but merely notices what he calls a hand- 
some show-window. Another person sees the 
window, pauses to examine its varied contents, 
rotes the ingenuity evinced in the manner of 
display, and sees a hundred beautiful things 
the one who went by in such haste never 
noticed, or surmised of their existence. There 
are thousands of beautiful hills this side of the 



Seeking the Sunshine. 143 

grand mountains, as there are thousands of op- 
portunities for men and women and children 
to find spots of sunshine, and to be happy, if 
they only will take one-half as much trouble 
to keep right, as to walk the wrong path which 
to many is so attractive because unnatural and 
exciting. 

There are little spots of sunshine on every 
field. If not to-day, to-morrow. To these are 
joys and hours of happiness in exact proportion 
as wo try to be happy, and to find the sunny 
spots. It is not necessary to be rich, or great, 
or powerful to be truly happy. Avarice is the 
curse of mankind. The spot of carpet warmed 
by the rays of the sun gave to the little kitten 
as much comfort as would all of out-doors. 
Then in its home it was safe and contented. 

But few know how to be happy. The first 
requirement is goodness of heart. To be good 
we must work on our own natures. Improve 
our minds. Learn self-control. Be liberal to 



144 Seehing the Sunshine. 

others who are pilgrims on the same road. The 
perfect painting of the Madonna and Child in 
our library was not the result of careless daubing 
of colors or the careless, reckless hurry work 
of a poor workman. It is the work of a great 
artist. God only knows how many liours he 
studied and worked. Here a heavy, there a 
light touch, till at last, as rises a mountain from 
a plain, or the Heaven-designed truth of the 
liberal, progressive love of Him who is Our 
Father, from the dark dungeon of bigotry and 
ignorance, came forth the conception of the 
Inspired painter who gave us the picture of 
the mother and the child Jesus. "We must not 
grasp for more than we can hold, for greater 
truths than a disciplined, inquiring mind can 
realize. 

On the shore of the Eternal Home many a 
millionnaire — many a child of wealth and fashion 
will sit in sadness to see and to feel the spirits 
of many a poor one, despised on earth, touch the 



SeeJdng the Sunshine. 145 

shore, be clasped by loving arms and go at once 
far on the road to the great Home of Inspi- 
ration. The gold he strove for — the wealth won 
by the tricks, deceits, sharp games and dishonest 
practices, and oftentimes expended for church 
spires and cushioned pews above and away 
from the poor, will be left on the shore of sin 
and sorrow, and struggling to still farther curse 
the evil disposed and the hypocritical, and the 
new life will be entered by a bankrupt who must 
at some time learn to control himself, and thus 
be truly greater than he who conquers millions. 

We know a woman whose life has been but a 
chapter of torture. Early in life, to escape 
endless perdition, she embraced the first faith 
that was in horrible picturing presented. She 
grew to womanhood fearing God, fearing death, 
trembling over the punishment she was made 
to believe followed God's mercy and boundless 
love. Her soul, stricken by fear, terror-riven, 
afraid to even look out of its dark church prison- 



146 Seeking the Sunshine. 

house for that light, which is for all who care to 
enjoy it. To-day she is but a slave to a bigoted 
education — to ignorant fancies, to the ideas she 
does not believe in. Few have been the spots 
of sunshine in her life. She does penance to 
escape the wrath of Him who is of Heaven. 
The flower of love has never really bloomed in 
her heart. She is a wife, because she was com- 
manded to wed one who demanded her hand of 
a greed-loving father that she might be the 
cushion for his lust to rest on, to her agony. 
Her soul is not her own. She obeys her 
minister and her husl^and. She attends the 
house of worship when the bell rings, then re- 
turns to her disli-water, catechism, and her 
slavery to him Avho owns her as he does liis 
horse, his dog, his cows. 

A few days since we met her at our home in 
the city, and she said : 

" Oh ! what shall I do ? I am lost in the dark. 
When I would seek for light, they tell me it is 



Seeking the Sunshine. 147 

for woman to be in darkness. That she is born to 
suffer. Ordained to suffer for the glory of man. 
That I must not question the religion 1 was 
driven to, and crucified on ; that I cannot 
beKeve. That I must not doubt, nor inquire, 
nor cultivate my powers of mind. That I must 
accept that which does not seem true or reason- 
able — that I must go with the tide, without an 
idea of my own, on to the final hour, and trust 
all to chance. Oh ! tell me is that the truth ? " 

No, good woman, it is not the truth no more 
than ignorance is intelligence — darkness, light. 
The Chinese encase the feet of their female 
children in glass or wooden shoes. An hundred 
times have we looked to see with what pain, and 
how insecurely the victims of this practice 
walked. We call it cruel, yet it is kindness 
compared to those creeds which bind souls, and 
minds, and thoughts as mummies are wrapped, 
and kept in darkness, when lie, who is the sun- 
light of the soul, made the light, commanded 



148 Seehing the Sunshine. 

that it be not put under a bushel, and who 
enjoined upon all of God's creatures to seek for 
truth continually. 

Think for yourself. Do not insult Him who 
gave the power of thought, which is the Eternal 
Spirit, by hiding your talent, closing your blinds 
and believing that which you cannot believe. 
The future life is shadowed here. It is not true 
tliat words, and professions, and observances, 
and long faces, and lives devoted to slavish ser- 
vitude, to bigotry aud intolerance, will lead us to 
Heaven. The future life will be one of work. 
There are j)lanets and worlds yet to visit, to 
labor in, to improve. There are duties for us of 
a nature that leads to the source of inspiration 
itself. We are not to live an eternity of idle- 
ness, singing and eating, and drinking of milk 
and honey, but we will be called on to help in 
beautifying the work of creation. Some of us 
will be master workmen in the Land of the Leal, 
others will be hewers of wood and drawers of 



Seeking the Sunshine. 149 

water. Some of ns will be workers there — some 
will be messengers back and fro between the 
students here and the teachers There, that more, 
and more, and still more of the children of earth 
may be the better prepared to sooner enter upon 
the great work when our term of schooling here 
is ended. 

Ton say this is new. That it was not so from 
the first. But it was ! Light came. Minds 
came. Life was given. Step by step the Eter- 
nal Power marked His advance and taught the 
example of progression. The floods came — then 
the storm. The patriarchs went to their homes 
and to a renewal of work in the new fields to 
which they had been called. Then went others to 
join them. Thus grew the Helpers in the gardens 
of God, millions of them that there are. Then 
came the great medium between Heaven and 
Earth to tell us that there was work in the vine- 
yard for all to do, and that he who went in at the 
eleventh hour, and who worked, should receive 



150 Peeking the Simshine. 

a reward. The gliding of the star to rest over 
Bethlehem was a step of jDrogression. The 
coraino; of the new Lio-ht, and a new teacher of 
old truths, according to orthodox ideas could 
not be now, because it never had been be- 
fore ! 

He lived — He taught — He was crucified ; but 
the Sermon on the Mount remains ! 

So Galileo lived and died. So Newton told ' 
of something new. So Columbus went out from 
darkness and ignorance, because commanded to. 
So Franklin called fire from the clouds, and it 
came — not simpl}^ because he called it, but 
because it was there, and some spirit once of 
earth told him of it. So, too, did Morse make 
the essence of Eternal Power to talk. He 
hai-nessed the subtlest of all elements, and now 
thousands guide and control a power that, 
according to orthodoxy, must not be simply 
because it was not discovered at the first, or 
revealed to minds before they were able to look 



Seeking the Sunshine. 151 

for — to search for — to grasp tliis whisper of the 
Ahnighty. 

They denounced Galileo, and threw their 
grains of black sand before his advancing truths, 
but iu vain. They bade good-by to Columbus, 
but he returned. They anathematized Caxton 
for discovering the art of printing, yet used 
his art to disseminate their dying ideas. They 
accused Franklin of impiety, yet now honor his 
memory. They sneered at Fulton, yet lived to 
ride on his steamboat. They ridiculed Morse, 
yet lived to telegraph the words of God from 
shore to shore — from the old world to the new, 
even as students of truth converse from the 
shores of time to those of Eternity with those 
who have passed on. All these things come in 
their time, as there is a time for all things, ar.d 
we must not forget it. As vial after vial has 
been opened — as seal after seal has been broken 
— as revelation after revelation has been made — 
as truth after truth has been established — as step 



152 Seeking the Sunshine. 

by step mankind has been led to the shadow of 
the Temple to be prepared to know God, men 
have doubted, have denounced ; but knowledge 
has advanced as light penetrates darkness. 
Those who opposed yesterday are converts to- 
day, or will be to-morrow. The morning sun 
does not illumine every ravine till after it has 
passed the meridian. God's truths and plans 
were not all made known before we were born 
■ — will not be while we live, nor for ages after 
we have joined the throng of perfect workmen 
in other spheres. The old must pass away. The 
new must come. Those who blindfold their 
eyes are cramped by priestcraft, and refuse to 
look around them, had better be tearing off their 
bandages, and arising to go forward, searching 
for themselves, or they will waken on the other 
shore as new-born infants, while those who 
strive, and labor, and seek to use the mind God 
has given them, Avill be far, far, far ahead of 
them on the upward road. 



Seeking the Sunshine. 153 

There is a new life for all who are weary. 
There are spots of sunshine for all who live 
if they will but seek them. If not in one place, 
let them go to another. The viper fell not from 
the hand of Paul till he shook it off. The load 
Christian had on his back dropped not off till he 
advanced beyond the Slough of Despond. The 
Ark did not rest till it floated on to its resting 
place. The victory does not come till the battle 
has been fought. Education only follows severe 
study. The teacher follows the pupil as day fol- 
lows night. Each one must judge for himself or 
herself. 'Twas for this mind was given us. No 
matter what does another — what does the world 
— every one is the arbiter of his own destiny, 
the securer of his own reward — the keeper of 
his own soul while on earth. Indeed is there " a 
divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them as 
we may," but the hewing must be done first, and 
then will come the rest, the new work, the great 

reward, after on earth our final Saturday Night. 
7* 




CHAPTER XY. 



THE ORPHAN GIRL AND HEK FRIENDS. 




WO weeks ago she M^as a little girl of 
nine years of age, playing about the 
yard with other children. She lired 
a hard life, on the streets, selling the afternoon 
papers. When it rained, and the streets were 
muddy, with a worn-out broom she swept the 
street crossings, ran before us, held up her little 
grimy hand, while her large eyes seemed to say 
in loving letters : 

" Please sir — only a penny 1 " 
Her name was Kitty Burnham. Once her 
father was a tenant on the Wads worth estate 
somewhere in the Western portion of the State 



The Orjphan Girl and Her Friends. 155 

of New York. Two weeks ago a drunken 
driver, high mounted on his seat in a jobbing 
wagon, recklessly drove his horses furiously 
through a crowd, on the street near the City 
Hall. Out from one horse-car, hastening to 
another one in search of customers for her 
papers she darted like a busy bee, so intent on 
earning pennies that she did not see the horses 
or know of them till she had been knocked down 
by one of them — till the heavy wagon had run 
over her frail body, and broken five of her little 
ribs, and left her a wounded, fainting picture of 
agony on the hard stones of the street. The 
drunken driver stopped not to see who he had 
killed. The ones who saw the act thought more 
of the child than of the man ; they all ran to 
take her up, and the driver escaped. 

If he has a family and a little girl at home, 
perhaps he told her, when she was in his arms 
after supper, that he saw another little girl that 
day. Perhaps he said : 



156 The Orj)han Girl and Her Friends. 

" I had an adventure to-day. After I had got 
drunk, and lashed my horses till they ran, a busy 
little girl, struggling for life, was in the street, 
contending with men for a livelihood. Then I 
lashed my horses again, and ran over this little 
girl, and crushed her to the pavement ; then 
drove first into one street, then into another, to 
reach home without arrest. Am 1 not a kind 
man, and a good father? " 

Did you ever think that the father or the 
mother of one child should have a warmer place 
for all children than many of them have ? 

A great, big, burly policeman took little Kitty 
Burnham in his arms, all dirt and muddy, and 
carried her as tenderly as he could to a hospital 
near by. The tears ran down his furrowed 
cheeks as he walked on with the limp victim, 
while the crowd followed, some in tears and all 
in sadness, clear to the doors of the place for 
rest and refuge. 

They laid little Kitty on a bed. The kind 



The Oi'jjhan Girl and Her Friends. 157 

matron of the place took off her torn dress, and 
her coarse, worn-out shoes. Of stockings she 
had none; of underclothes but a single little 
garment. The surgeon examined her cuts and 
bruises, and looked serious. Then he said he 
was afraid she had sustained serious internal 
injuries, and that she could not live long. But 
warm hearts reached out with willing hands to 
assist the little sufferer. For several days she 
lived, now better then not so well, as life and 
death contended for the mastery for her as they 
do for the rich and powerful. 

"When we next saw her, the stains of dirt had 
been washed from her hands and face and neck. 
She was pale and weak. Her black silken hair 
had been' brushed out somewhat, and on the little 
pillow kept watch over her pale cheek, and 
listened at times to her moans, as she suffered 
in the edge of the unknown forest. 

Yesterday she was dead. They had placed 
her in a plain little coffin, and she did not look 



158 The Orjplian Girl and Her Friends. 

one bit like the dirty street sweeper, or the 
active news-girl, so intent on selling papers. 
A few days before she had looked like a little 
beggar. Now, she looked exactly as do the 
children of the rich, except, perhaps, there was 
an older look, as her mind had left its trace 
on the matter of the child material. 

Tlie policeman told us her history, for she 
had one, set in sorrow, lined with bitterness. 
Thus ran his words, in quiet voice, as he sat 
in the office : 

"Her name, as you know, was Kitty Burn- 
ham. Her father used to live in the Sixth ward. 
He did all sorts of odd jobs of work, and drank 
a great deal. In fact he was often so drunk 
that the officers had to take care of him. He 
was a handsome fellow when sober, but ugly 
when he was not. He was a smart fellow, but 
always chafed under good restraint, and sneered 
at religion, and said man was accountable only 
to himself, and did not exist after death. He 



The Orjphan Girl and Her Friends. 159 

kept running down — borrowing money — neglect- 
ing his family, running to places of dissipation, 
and finally became a regular loafer. Then 
he had the delirium tremens and died in Belle- 
vue Hospital one Sunday morning. 

" His wife was a nice-looking sort of a woman, 
but she never seemed to know what to do, or 
how to do anything. She was a woman who 
could be cared for, but who could never care 
for herself. I think she was not educated in 
the right way. After her husband died, she 
wrote to her parents somewhere in the country, 
but they paid no attention to her. It came out 
that they were very angry when she was mar- 
ried, and told her they disowned her. I cannot 
see how a father or a mother could thus drive 
their own flesh and blood away, and then when 
trouble came keep it away ; but some folks 
do, and greater shame upon them. 

" Last winter Kitty's mother died in the hos- 
pital on the Island. She seemed to die out and 



160 The Orjphan Girl and Her Friends. 

fade away, no one can tell just how. I heard 
the hospital physicians say she died of a broken 
heart, from the abuse of her husband and the 
cruelty of her parents. But she died. 

"Kitty was taken care of for a time by a 
woman who keeps a rough sort of boarding- 
house on Oak street. Kitty's mother owed her 
something, and she took her clothes and poor 
little Kitty in some way, to pay the debt. After 
awhile Kitty began to sell papers. She was 
smart, and chirrupy as a cricket. Kain or shine, 
she was always out. She used to run over to the 
station with the papers, and some of us always 
bought of her, because she seemed to need our 
help in some way. Once I wanted my wife 
to adopt her, and take care of her, but she said 
our two children were all we could care for. 
I wish I had taken her now, then she would be 
alive. But we can help some other child. I 
tell you the police, and the authorities of the 
city feel as if they ought to be fathers of thou- 



The Orjplian Girl aiul Her Friends. 161 

sands of the poor little children, who have none 
else to care for them. But I must go now. 
As Kitty had no relatives — no one to love her, 
perhaps it is best that she was run over and 
killed at once as to be run over and trampled 
upon all her life." 

So lived and so died a poor little orphan girl 
in this city. She was murdered by somebody. 
Was it by the drunken driver or by the drunken 
father who wasted his life and left his little 
one to become a waif on the streets ; or was she 
murdered by the listless mother who perhaps 
had more of a load than she could carry, and 
so gave up her life to despair ? Or did the 
relatives in their country home who surely could 
have given an innocent child bread and milk 
and some of the wealth of fresh air all about 
them to humanity if not to consanguinity. 
Somebody murdered little Kitty Burnham who 
was trying to take care of herself. We cannot 
censure the father, for God alone has the right 



162 The OrjpTian Girl and Her Friends. 

to censure and to judge men. But this we cau 
do. The world is full of children, as all who 
live were once. We can pray the Father in 
Heaven, and the good angels wlio in pity try to 
make us all better, to stand between men and 
temptation, to help our brothers who are weak 
and who do not realize the duty of life or the 
glory there is in being true, earnest men, for 
as we do by others and by the little children 
so will Our Father do by us in the gardens 
of the eternal and the life beyond our tuial 
Saturday Night. 




CHAPTER XYI. 



BABY AND HER KISSES. 




EVERAL miles out from the citj, just 
in the edge of a village, stands a 
white house with green blinds. A 
pretty cottage home. Many a time have we 
opened the gate, passed into the yard where the 
young wife had trained roses to climb and pinks 
to spread as they gave beauty and fragrance to a 
place which had become a workingman's para- 
dise. Of a Saturday night there was indeed no 
place like home. No more happy place than this 
home, at least. It was like basking in the mel- 
low sunshine of God's smile to visit here and 
behold what love, affection, industry and confi- 



164 Baby and Her Kisses. 

deuce could do toward making lifo beautiful 
beyond words. 

The owner of this cottage home was not a rich 
man, but no man had greater wealth. He was 
an honest man. His eyes were like the cushions 
on which angels bear infants to heaven, so soft, 
gentle and full of tenderness were they. His 
heart ever seemed more like some beautiful 
thought budding into flower than the arena 
wherein struggle liuman passions, so well had 
he controlled himself as did our Brother the 
waves when they oljeyed His command to be 
still. He lived to concentrate his life — to nuike 
home the dearest and the sweetest place on 
earth, and the rectitude of his life spread sun- 
shine all over and about the dear ones who 
awaited his coming. What God the great Chem- 
ist had joined together, no silent yet powerful 
influence had put asunder, for our friend and 
the pure woman from whom he drew so much 
inspiration lived in the doorway of that beauti- 



Bahy and Her Kisses, 165 

ful belief that Home is Heaven when Home 
holds none but loving hearts. 

Day after day our friend labored at his trade. 
Like the father of Jesus, he was a carpenter. 
He built houses for others and used the reward 
of his skill and labor to beautify his home. 
Thus he put his money to greater interest than 
any miser ever yet received, or Shyleck could 
demand. He studied and worked. He built 
himself into a magnificent manhood. He 
trained his intelligence, which is immortal, 
toward Heaven, and fritted not himself away 
in fretfulness, dissipation or fault-finding with 
his station or condition in life. He turned his 
strength to profit — his life to success — his vines 
to beautify his life and home. He planted 
contentment, and bounteous was the harvest of 
happiness he reaped, for he was dearly beloved 
by a loving wife and three beautiful children. 
His wife was loving because she could not help 
being so. Mated, as well as married, their lives 



166 Bahy and Her Kisses. 

went sweetly on like wedded rivulets singing 
their way to the sea. 

Their children were beautiful. They were 
conceived in love and born in the garden of 
complete confidence. While the weaver Avas 
at work in his raysterions chamber, there were 
no storms, no fits of ngly passion, no lowering 
skies, no crossing of purposes and filling of 
hearts with agony to the tangling and twisting 
and warping of life threads in the unborn, so 
the little ones who came into the world were 
beautiful and dearly loved blessings. "Would 
that we knew words in which to convey ideas. 
Oh ! that we could sit with all who are waiting 
to be parents and tell them how love beautifies, 
and unkindness to her who is to be a mother 
mars, scars and distorts the innocent till tliey 
come into the world laden with the seeds of 
misery for their after-lives on earth. Wlien 
men know what men should know, and women 
live as women should live, every child born to 



Bahy and Her Kisses. 167 

earth will be born to happiness. But not of 
this now. 

Our friend was an honest man. He dared be 
true to himself. lie dared to be true to his 
manhood. He dared to be true to the woman 
he loved. Few are the men so brave as he. 
His home held him by night as did his duty by 
day. He lived, not to add to that insane throng 
which mistakes excitement for happiness, but 
to aid his wife and his children to develop and 
grow in that strength of heart and soul which 
gives us positions in the ranks of those who are 
God's companions in the Gardens of the Golden 
Eternal. 

When the labors of the day were over, he 
hastened to his cottage home. He was wel- 
comed on the way by those whose little feet ran 
to meet, whose little lips did sweetly greet him. 
He was not too proud to play with his little 
ones. He was not too dignified to love his wife. 
He was not so great as to make his home ones 



168 Baby and Her Kisses. 

UTihappy in the shadow of his selfish ambition. 
He was a workingraan, untitled on earth, but 
wearing on his heart the garter of the knight- 
hood of God. He loved his children and they 
loved him, because he was good and his presence 
was the balmy air wafting them on to lasting 
and everlasting happiness. 

The heart-broken wife was kneeling by the 
bedside as we entered the room. The two 
eldest children were sobbing as if their hearts 
were broken. The father and husband had 
crossed the river and moved out from the mortal 
temple in which he had dwelt for years. He 
had crossed the river by whose earth bank his 
loved ones were kneeling in tears as the M^aves 
of bitterness dashed in great breakers over their 
hearts. He had gone with his patterns to build 
for those he loved a home in that Land of the 
Leal where there is no sorrow — where hearts are 
at rest and where the stings of earthly circum- 



Bahy and Her Kisses. 169 

stances do not reach to wound the studious 
soul. 

It was a death-bed scene. The hour of trial 
for the living — of grief for those left in the des- 
ert while the faithful guide is journeying to the 
oasis and finding the camping-ground and shady 
groves wherein will come those whose grief-wrapt 
hearts are now lifeless in their sorrow. 

A lady friend of the afflicted ones entered the 
room, bearing in her arms the two year-old child 
of him who slept never before so quietly. She 
bore the babe to the bedside. The little darling 
looked at those who were bowed in grief. Then 
it looked at him who slept, and from her little lips 
came in inquiring tones : 

" Pa-pa ! " 

llis face was as one asleep. So quiet and full 
of rest. The good friend held the child down so 
it could kiss the cheek of him but for whom she 
had not been. At once she sprang from the arms 

of the good friend, nestled close to the face of 

8 



170 Bahy and Her Kisses. 

the dead, and with her httle hands on his face, 
repeated' in her baby voice : 

" Pa-pa ! Baby wake pa-pa ! " 

Then she bent over, printed a sweet httle kiss 
on one of the eyes of him who slept, quickly 
raised her head and laughed in glee. But papa 
did not waken. At once she bent over, kissed the 
other closed eye, threw back her head and said : 

" Papa, wake for baby ! " 

Tliis had been her early morning play. Oft 
and oft had she climbed up to his face and kissed 
his eyes till they opened to smile on baby, as he 
held her to his heart and wakened for the morn- 
ing romp which flavored with love the labor of 
the day. The little orphan knew not that his 
sleep was eternal. But she saw that papa would 
not waken to her kisses, as the sobs came from 
breaking hearts, and tears ran like rain down 
cheeks unused thereto. Her little lips were put 
up in grief, the tears of disappointment came to 
her eyes as she cuddled down by the face of him 



Bahy and Her Kisses. 171 

whose life-love had been to her food for the heart 
and sunshine for her infant soul. Her sobs and 
tears came free and fast. Her faith was broken. 
There was a mystery she could not fathom — 
something her young intelligence could not com- 
prehend. 

Yet, who dare say that the angels who went 
with her father to prepare a home for his loved 
ones in the golden gardens had not returned, and 
whispered to her soul a knowledge hitherto un- 
known ? 

Papa was dead. His spirit had gone on to its 
real work. Well might that little innocent know 
that papa was dead when her sweet, warm kisses 
could not open his eyes to see her eager smiles, 
as she waited at the threshold of slumber for his 
return. 

The world is all too full of dead fatliers and 
of dead mothers. Of those who have closed their 
eyes to love, innocence and that affection which 



1Y2 Bahy and Her Kisses. 

marks the God-like of human nature. If men 
knew the happiness there is in heart-warmed 
homes, they never would close their eyes to true 
love nor depart on selfish missions, as do those 
who die moral deaths. 

The heart of the child was broken when she 
realized that no longer could her little kiss open 
the eyes of the papa she loved. The world is 
full of men and of women, children of larger 
growth, whose hearts are breaking because of 
their inability to open with tokens from the heart 
the eyes of those they have idolized. To such 
mourners time brings scars oftener than men 
know of. God pity all such ! Their grief is 
greater, and with reason, than is those who live 
for each other — who walk hand in hand, as heart 
in heart, through life to accomplish good and who 
are left only for a time, certain of soon meeting 
in the Land of the Leal, where those who were 
the best, the truest, the noblest and most devoted 
to home and to humanity in this life, will wear 



Bahy and Her Kisses. 



173 



crowns and be blessed with the angels in that 
beautiful home wherein all the good actions and 
kind thoughts here are preserved to our credit, 
to the glory and reward there is for all who are 
deserving, in that beautiful life beyond our final 
Saturday Night. 




CHAPTER XVII. 



HELPING THE ENDUSTKIOUS. 




OW litttle do we who sit in cosy little 
parlors, by warm fires, surrounded 
by loved ones and home comforts 
think of the ones who suffer from cold, hunger 
and sickness. Wliy cannot all of us, who are 
children of life, have pleasant homes? The 
reason nnist be that all do not work so much to 
make themselves and others happy as to mount 
the waves of excitement in a struggle for that 
wealth and power which will benefit us not a 
bit when the race is ended, and we come to the 
shores of the lasting existence. 

Standing by the window to-night, looking out 



Selping the Industrious. 175 

upon the street, we watched those who passed. 
Some were clad in furs. Some in stout, warm 
clothing. Some hurried, shivering by, hastening 
on to a shelter from the storm. Some there were 
in rags and poverty, rushing ahead, going some- 
where. One stout man walked on toward the 
west. Our eyes followed him till he could no 
longer be seen. As he turned a corner, our 
thoughts rode on the storm winds, on to the west- 
ward — over the fields and orchards of the 
Empire State — past the farm-houses wherein 
were gatliered so many happy families, talking, 
reading, singing and pleasantly passing the time. 
On and still on — over the great lakes — over the 
wide prairies to the cabin homes of the bravest 
and best of men and women — the pioneers. 

How the snow flew as the wind whistled so 
piercingly about the little huts and the cabins, 
and the rude homes of the men who go forth as 
does the word of God, that life, and love, and 
blessings, and rest may follow in their path. 



176 Jlcljplng the Industrious. 

Here, about these new homes, we saw men and 
women and children suffering from cold and 
exposure. The mud walls of their cabins kept 
out the cold, but about the rustic windows the 
wind whistled in as if in mockery ; through the 
blanket doors the snow sifted and was driven by 
tlie blast, wliile the weary watchers and freezing 
children wondered and wondered if the storm 
would never cease. Then we rode on the storm 
from home to home on the prairies. Little 
homes miles apart, to find people starving, freez- 
ing, dying with cold and from exposure. We 
saw them in heaps and drifts of snow as their 
released spirits left their frozen bodies, their old 
homes, and were borne on the wings of the 
hurricane over the snow-fields and on to the 
mellow garden in the golden land. 

God pity, and God will pity those who bravely 
battle with life, no matter whether they are the 
pioneers who go forth to turn the sod and sow 
the wheat, or the ones v\^lio push on in obedience 



Heljying the Industrious. 177 

to the wish of the Great Master to break up the 
hard ground of falsehood and ignorance, and 
prepare the soil for the great crop which will so 
surelj follow as men go forth to work. Only 
this, who thinks of the pioneers ? Who but God 
cares for them, when rich men and law-makers 
turn against them, and wrap in furs, even by 
well-tempered fires, that the faintest breath of 
the cold, the pure, the life-giving air may not 
reach them ? Why is it that so many who have 
been pioneers themselves — who have been to the 
front, fall back like those a-faint, and lose the 
sympathy all should have with those who labor ? 
Of a truth, those who fall by the wayside do not 
bring forth the good fruit expected and hoped 
from them. 

Why is it that we have so little sympathy with 
the poor wlio are always with us? To-day, in 
the city of Brooklyn — in the City of Churches, 
there was a peculiar case in court. Will those 
who have good homes give thoughts to the poor 



178 Helping the Industrious. 

in our cities who at times snifer as do the 
pioneers, and who in living, die a thousand 
deaths ? A poor old woman was arrested by a 
police officer and brought into court charged 
with stealing. The crowd of spectators looked at 
lier, and said : 

" If a woman of that age does not know better 
than to steal, send her to prison. That is what 
prisons are made for — to confine thieves and 
robbers," 

A well-to-do, middle aged woman was the 
complainant. She advanced to the stand set 
apart for witnesses, and told, under oath, how the 
poor old woman, whose face was so wet with tears, 
had stolen from her six pairs of pantaloons for 
men's wear, and asked that the prisoner be sent 
to prison for one year at least. 

By order of the Con it, the feeble old woman, 
under oath, testified as follows : 

" Please, sir, I am but a poor old woman, but I 
can tell the truth. I did not steal the pants, at 



Helping tJie Industrious. 179 

least I did not mean to. The woman there, who 
swears I did, has a contract to make pantaloons. 
Last Monday niorning she gave me six pairs to 
make, and was to pay me seventeen cents a pair 
for making them when I brouglit them back. I 
made them, your Honor, as well as I could, and 
worked till one o'clock every morning on them to 
get them done last night — the six pairs in five 
days. I took them to her last night, to get the 
money, for I had eaten nothing since Thursday 
morning, as I could have had no coal for my 
little furnace, nor any kerosene to sew by. I 
took them to her. She examined them and said 
they were not half made, and she would pay 
me nothing at all. She has served me so twice 
before. 

"And Judge, they were made good — just as 
good as I could make them — just as she told me 
to, and just as I had made others that she paid 
for. I begged of her to pay me even half the 
sum, but she wouldn't. She said I could leave 



180 Helping the Industrious. 

them, or take them home, rip them all to pieces, 
and make them all over again. I said I would 
do it, and took them home. The snow was so 
deep, it was so cold, and I was so sick, that I took 
them into a place and pawned them all for a 
dollar, which was three cents less than she owed 
me, for I had made them, and thought she could 
get them, and I could get my pay, so I wouldn't 
freeze and die, and have to be buried by the law 
in the Potter's Field. Please, sir, I didn't mean 
to steal them." 

The great agony of poverty had sjDoken the 
truth. The scalding tears ran down the cheeks 
of somebody's mother^ as there she stood, faint 
and with a load of grief greater than she could 
bear. 

The spectators looked at the Judge. The Judge 
looked at the spectators — at the accuser and the 
accused. The accuser cried : 

" Did you hear her, Judge ? She says she 
stole them. Send an officer for them, and send 



Helping the Industrious. 181 

her to prison, for she is old enough to know 
better ! " 

" Silence ! " cried the Jndge. 

" Shame — shame ! " said the spectators. 

The Judge said : 

"Prisoner, jou are at liberty. The woman 
owed yon for the work performed' — let her pay 
the price she agreed to pay to redeem tlie goods, 
for yon have not wronged her as she has wronged 
you." 

Out of evil came good, especially to the poor 
sufferer, for many a hand as she went out from 
that court-room dropped into her palm the 
" widow's mite," as many a worlcingman, out of 
work, and in the court-room from curiosity, 
hunted in his shallow pockets for stray pennies 
to give her. 

Some day there will be a change. The 
woman who now suffers, purified and educated 
to the heartlessness of the world, will pass on. 
But why is it that some people have hard 



182 Helping the Industrious. 

hearts, and none but selfisli desires ? Who can 
tell? 

Will our young readers try to cultivate char- 
ity, and liberality, and then try and take such 
care of themselves and their home ones that 
when they grow up they can see those they love 
provided for, even as we who strive to do good 
and add to the happiness of others will be loved 
and cared for after finished shall be the work 
which will end when comes the welcome Satur- 
day Night. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



THE CHILDREN AND THEIK TREES. 




[EVERAL years ago, in a little log 
house on a farm near the most thriv- 
ing of the cities in the northern tier 
of counties of the State of New York, lived 
a very poor family — a father, mother, and three 
boys and two girls. Before we ever thought 
of writing for the children anywhere — for the 
boys and girls in the homes all over the country 
— we used to play with the children in and all 
about the little log house. It was a quiet little 
home in the country. There was no need of 
keeping all the doors locked by day and bolted 
by night, as people must do in large cities 



184 The Children and their Trees. 

to keep the thieves out ; but a home of honest 
people, surrounded by honest neighbors — by 
men and women who were growing up to man- 
hood, to usefulness and happiness. 

One April day, after we had all romped about 
the house, and the little shed where the oxen 
and farming utensils were kept ; then out along 
the little brook, which came leaping down 
from the hills, one of the boys proposed some- 
thing new. Said lie : 

" Let us all, each one of us, select a little tree, 
transplant it in the field back of the house, and 
see how well it can be made to grow, and what 
it will come to by and by." 

" Agreed," said all the children. In a few 
hours there had been as many little trees selected 
from the woods on the hill-side, and transplanted 
in the field, as there were children present when 
the idea was advanced. There were six trees 
taken up and transplanted. Two were oak, two 
were maple, and two were hickory. We remem- 



The Children and their Trees. 185 

ber tlie work of getting them, and the fun all 
of us had in transplanting them ; and with wliat 
care they were replaced in the earth. For 
several years they were all watched, more or 
less. One of the trees grew up a snarly, ugly- 
shaped, rough-barked oak. It looked stunted 
and sick. Then the one who transplanted it 
said: 

''' O 2)shaw ! Let it go. I am tired of playing 
tree ! The woods are filled witli trees." 

So that tree was left to itself, and when last 
we saw it, a year ago, it was the same stunted, 
one-sided, irregular, homely oak that it promised 
to be years ago. 

Another tree had life and growth for just one 
year, then it died. It had no care, and gave 
forth no beauty. Another of the trees has 
grown to a one-sided affair, not pretty, but fit 
only to be cut down and cast into the fire. 

A letter before us, written by one of the party 
of tree planters, says : 



186 The Children and their Trees. 

" Do not fail to come and see us this spring. 
Your tree is still alive. It has grown up straight 
and tall, and the grape-vines you planted at its 
roots years ago have grown up with it. I don't 
know whether the vines have pushed the tree 
higher than the others, or the tree pulled tbe 
vines along, but they have grown so nicely 
together that people stop to note the thrift and 
beauty of the tree which in summer-time - looks, 
with its many vines all about it, like some bower. 
It is a rare home for the birds in the summer, 
as are the two maples near by, all so straight and 
symmetrical. Come, and even the trees will 
give you welcome ! " 

How well we remember the old scenes and 
childish days. What strife as to which of us all 
should grow the finest tree. The two which 
grew bad were never cared for — no more than 
some parents care for their children. They 
seem to think all there is of life is the trans- 
planting. But the trees that grew so well — 



Tlie Children and their Trees. 187 

how they were cared for and petted ! The 
ground about them was kept soft, moist and 
enriched. When came the drouth in the sum- 
mer, those trees were watered, and had some- 
thing besides the hard soil to draw strength 
from. In the winter how the snow was heaped 
up about the trees to keep the frost away ! 
When little shoots and knot limbs would start 
out, with what care were they smoothly cut 
away l)efore they had time to draw the sap and 
the life, and the pride away from the growing 
tree ! When one child was sick or away, the 
others watched and cared for the trees of the 
" partners." The children who were too selfish 
or too busy to care for the trees of others, soon 
had no one to care for theirs. 

Thus years passed on. The two maples grew 
so rapidly and to such charming shape, they 
were called the twin beauties, and after a while 
gave of sap enough to make choice morsels 
of sugar. We do believe all the neighbors 



188 The Children and their Trees. 

coveted tliein, thej were so beautiful, and added 
so much to the beauty of the dear old homestead. 
The hickory grew up tall, shapely, splendid ; 
its bushy top round and like a great parasol. 
Many a winter have children around the hearth- 
stone told stories as they cracked and ate the 
nuts which fell from its thrifty limbs. The 
twelve grape-vine shoots set out in a circle about 
that one grew up with it, forming a bower, 
under cover of which scores of little children 
have passed many summer hours in their play. 
The old log farm-house has gone, torn down 
years ago, but the beautiful trees are still there, 
adding to the value and attractiveness of the 
well-known farm. They have already become 
landmarks, and who can tell how long they will 
be remembered, and with them all history 
of the ones who, from the woods and the hill- 
side, brought to the plain and the new life the 
saplings which, well-cared for, have so grown 
to beauty and adornment ? 



The Children and their Trees. 189 

Will not the children, or some of them, who 
read this, transplant a tree this spring, and see 
what they can make of it \ If each little hoy 
and girl who reads this would transplant and 
care for a tree, how well satisfied they would be 
in twenty years. There is something else about 
it. The tree might grow without re-planting, 
but if taken and cared for, the child will be 
benefited as well. lie will have something to 
think of — to watch — to care for — to help — to 
enjoy. Something to grow up with. We all 
want something to lean upon. It is hard for a 
person to grow up alone, and whateve]- will be 
a good companion for thoughts will do good 
to humanity. 

Children are like trees. Parents can let them 
run wild, grow up angular, dwarfed, deformed, 
gnarley and full of brambles, or they can by 
that care which follows love, educate their 
children to be beautiful in their youth, glorious 
in their old a2:e. Love is not lost, no matter 



100 The Children and tfieir Trees. 

whether it be given to a dog, a horse, a bird, a 
bush, a tree, or a child. It is that which makes 
men and women and children better. It cares 
for the flowers which so add to the beauty 
of home — for the tree which is taught and 
helped to an upright growth. It softens the 
little rocks, and the sharp corners, and the 
burdens of the household, and brings all of 
God's creatures nearer and still nearer to happi- 
ness and to Heaven. 

In the homes of the land are many children ; 
in the little cabins, the log houses — the low-built 
houses of the pioneers, God bless them ! are 
thousand of young oaks and hickories, and sweet 
maples of humanity, needing but care, and love, 
and attention to make them glorious and beauti- 
ful. Who does not love to work for children ? 
to see them grow in knowledge and all tlie 
better qualities ? And who, of all our friends — 
of all our kind readers — will do the most to love, 
and bring up aright witliout spot or blemish, the 



The Children and their Trees. 191 

ones who will, if kindly cared for, make known 
where stood the dear old homes, after we, who 
now are growing old so rapidly, shall have been 
removed to make room for the new workers? 
He who rides by the spot where stood the little 
log house can now say that good ideas were 
taught there, and that the work — the landmarks 
left, are indeed beautiful, as all of us wonld have 
the memory of ns which will be left after we 
shall have become workers in the Land of the 
Leal. 




CHAPTEE XIX. 



THE DRUNKEN MOTHER MURDERER. 




|S we sat bj tlie cheerful fire to-night, 
listening to music from a piano in an 
adjoining room, we looked in the 
grate at coals red burning, to see faces and 
forms and figures of men, and women, and 
children, seeming to throw life into their move- 
ments. Did you ever watch the coals a-burning 
by your own fireside, in your own home, seated in 
an easy chair by your own hearth and fender, to 
rest ? Indeed, there is no place like home — that 
is, if it is home, and a place where loving hearts 
are made to grow strong and fearless, and where 
the air seems laden with those beautiful, gentle 



The Drunken Mother Murderer. 193 

influences born of good resolves, correct living, 
and disposition to make home happy and ever 
agreeable. When the fire is once kindled, how 
easy to keep it burning all the while — to throw 
on more wood or coal ; to give food of fire to 
the hungry flame until it sings like the sunshine, 
that calls from twig and plant the buds and the 
flowers, that are to nature what the flowers of 
kindness are to mortal life and the endless life 
in the golden gardens. 

While listening to the pleasing music, and 
thinking of the long ago when bare walls and a 
place to stay, instead of a home, made life less 
a desirable result, we picked up a daily news- 
paper record of one short day. What a picture ! 
Unlike the ones we saw and watched in the 
burning coals, here were pictures of sadness, of 
crime, of ignorance, of sorrow. It seemed as if 
the paper was but a charnel house. Turn to 
this column or that, the record was the same. 

To read it, one would think this world to be that 
9 



194: The Drunken Mother Murderer. 

otlier world, where is said to be such a gathering 
of the bad that in the place of music is to be 
heard tlie continuous sound of wailing and 
gnashing of teeth. Instead of a string of pearls 
or beautiful beads, there were paragraphs after 
paragraphs of dark doings — of crime and wick- 
edness. Murders, robberies, swindlers, defalca- 
tions, rioting, assaults, brutal outrages and dis- 
asters, resulting fi*om not understanding the 
laws of man, of life, of nature. The paper 
seemed to be a record of selfishness — of mean, 
uglj, depressing news of the bad. Instead of 
lifting the soul higher, it came with a dark fall, 
a shadow of darkness, a protest against life and 
that humanity ever at war upon the children of 
a common fatherhood. 

One item read as follows: 

" Yesterday, in Brooklyn, while Mary Fogarty 
was passing along the street, she was run over 
by a wagon, and her child, a girl-infant of a few 
months old, was thrown under the wheels of a 



The Drunhen Mother Murderer. 195 

horse-car, and terribly mangled. It was taken 
to the hospital, where its leg was amputated. 
The mother was so drunk she could scarcely 
walk, and for some time was unable to tell her 
name or where she lived. The child cannot 
live." 

God pity the innocent, helpless little girl who 
was murdered by her mother ! Was it not terri- 
ble ? What had that poor little babe done that 
it should be thus tortured to death ? Who was 
to blame for all this misery ? By what right 
came so weak, degraded a woman with a little 
child born unto her for so cruel a death % Where 
was her home? Who was the husband of the 
woman ? the father of the murdered child ? 
Who sold to that woman, with a babe, the 
drink that made her a taker of life — the de- 
stroyer of her infant ? 

All these questions must pass unanswered. 
Into the sea of sorrow this one drop is swept by 
time, to blacken the character of man, and to 



196 The Drunken Mother Murderer. 

argue in favor of those efforts by which men 
and women can, if they will, be lifted out of 
and can work away from those influences which 
debase men, embitter lives, and unfit for the 
rest which is beyond the Saturday Night of this 
life — among the pure in spirit and the ones who 
believe in the beautiful God-whispered teachings 
of the Infinite. 

How earnestly we wish all this sin, and crime, 
and sorrow could be otherwise alleviated, aban- 
doned. If men only would, how happy this life 
could be made. We have no censure for the 
woman, who must have been heart-broken when 
she realized what she had done. Perhaps the 
first fault was not hers. A husband may have 
set a bad example — maj^ have driven her to 
desperation. The one who sold the poison did it 
under the sanction of law, and the approval of 
society. So he cannot be to blame. Perhaps 
the woman had no home — no joys — no happi- 
ness. All that is not for us to know. It may 



The Driinken Mother Murderer. 197 

be tliat she was not educated aright. Somebody 
was in fault. 

We cannot any of us bring the little mangled 
infant back to life and perfection of limbs and 
flesh. We would not if we could, for there are 
homes in Heaven and gentle whispers and soft 
arms, and the influence of Jesus, and that watch- 
ful love and care all children should have on 
earth, for all who are torn or mangled and here 
abused, in that beautiful Land of the Leal, with 
Ilim who said, " Suffer little children to come 
unto me." How much that sentence tells of 
humanity, or its selfishness ! He knew that men 
were bad — that women were weak — that hearts 
were selfish — that life on earth is too oft but a 
desert waste ; that children would be born, 
would be unprovided with homes, neglected by 
parents, abused and hardened by the world. 
Then He stooped in compassion, and took the 
little ones — all who were helpless, into his 
embrace, and gave utterance to that sentence 



198 TJie Drunken Mother Murderer. 

which in its brief self is a million-fold greater 
than the woi-ld ! 

Why will not all who live try to be good, and 
kind, and loving, and earnest in that which sends 
mankind heavenward? They tell us that the 
poor live and die in vain. That the infants of 
the poor are worth nothing to the world. This 
is not true. The Saviour was but a poor child, 
born in a manger, but the truths he told were of 
God, who is all. It matters not that the father 
of the poor little child might have been a care- 
ful, watchful husband — or that the mother might 
have been at her home sober. The child was 
born. It lived — was torn to pieces. Its short life 
served a purpose. We know of a little girl who 
never will have a drunken father, or a drunken 
mother. We know of a little child who will not 
be murdered in such a way. This little girl will 
have a home. It will be loved and cared for 
like some beautiful flower being taken to a wed- 
ding. We never shall quarrel with those who 



The Drunken Mother Miirderer. 199 

will not, or who cannot tliink as we do, no matter 
if they live weak, foolish lives, and spend all 
they earn in dissipation rather than in procuring 
and beautifying a home, a rest, and a shelter. 
Ours is a duty, and it shall be done, for thereby 
comes strength, health, and great happiness. If 
others do not see their duty, they will not realize 
happiness, nor will they be able to say, when 
comes the end of time, that they have been care- 
ful of the spirit jewels confided to their keep- 
ing. 

Proud is the harvestraan who, at the close of 
day, journeys homeward bearing his sheaves 
with him. So, too, will that man and that 
woman be proud who can go into the new life, 
looking the welcoming angel squarely in the eyes, 
and say : 

"My work is done as well as I could do it. 
The talents given to me I have made good use 
of. The children given to me, as I was given to 
others, as they were given to God, have been 



200 The Drunken Mother Murderer. 

cared for, and loved and taught to live for 
others, and thus the more for themselves. 1 
have been faithful to truth — to my better self — 
to humanity ; have worked in the vineyard of 
life to a good purpose, and now would rest from 
the old, and enter upon the duties and rewards 
which are of the treasures where the heart is, 
beyond the dark and the stormy Saturday Night. 



pglW!^^ 




^^S. 


^^M 


1 


^^m 


^e^^^^HSSQiBS^^^^^ 


^m 


^m 


] 



CHAPTER XX. 



HOW A NEWSBOY KEPT THE WOLF AWAY. 




O-NIGHT there is a world of poverty 

and suffering in this city. There are 

many thousands of men, women and 

children in want and misery, notwithstanding the 

fact that thousands and tens of thousands of 

dollars have been given by those who could afford 

to be liberal, for the use and benefit of the poor. 

It is not for us to say who should give, or how 

much should be given. It is best to do as we 

would be done by, and to remember that the re- 

Avard comes not so much to the one who makes 

and hides away till death calls him to another 

life, but to him who uses his talents and distri- 
9* 



202 How a Newsboy Jcept the Wolf Away. 

butes his surplus in charity where it will do the 
most good. 

A little more than a year ago, there died on 
Ninth street in this city a man who for years had 
made a living by keeping a saloon, or fashionable 
drinking place on Broadway. He was a good 
fellow, as the speech of thoughtless men have it. 
What he made he spent freely. His wife was a 
gay, thoughtless woman, who had nothing to do 
except to live at her ease, spend money foolishly, 
and be waited on. It was easy come and easy 
go with them, till one day he died. Then tlie 
dream was broken. His place of business was 
closed. His friends disappeared as by magic. 
The crowds which assembled at his saloon met 
somewhere else. 

His widow, had but one child. A boy eleven 
years of age at the time of his father's death. 
An infant was not more helpless than she. One 
by one various articles of jewelry disappeared as 
they were placed in pawn. She dressed well and 



How a Ifewsboy k&pt the Wolf Away. 203 

looked very becoming in her mourning goods, 
witli jewelry to match, but no one proposed for 
her hand and heart. With her son, a sharp, 
shrewd little fellow, she moved from boarding- 
house to poorer boarding-house, till at last she 
took two rooms on Baxter street, where she now 
lives. 

Last October her son began business on his own 
hook, as men say. Pie started in as a newsboy 
on the Bowery. Many a man who formerly 
bought hot drinks of the father buys papers 
of the son, as he tells some companion who the 
little merchant is. How many histories there 
are just back of hundreds and thousands of the 
poor children of all cities ! 

To-night, at the corner of Canal street and 
the Bowery, we saw the lad with his bundle 
of papers. He was a business boy. Instead of 
standing idly on the corner waiting for customers, 
he dodged here and there, shouting at the top of 
his voice, just as anxious, earnest and determined 



204 Row a Newsboy kept the Wolf Away. 

as are the brokers down in "Wall street or the 
men who shout for their candidates in caucus- 
rooms. 

" Hello, Bobby ! Is that you « " 

"Tea, sir, it's me!" 

" How are you getting along this cold 
winter ? " 

" All right, sir." 

" Do not the hard times affect you ? " 

" Not much, sir. I 'spect they would if I'd 
let them, sir ; but I won't let them." 

" How so — how can you help yourself ? The 
big merchants on Broadway say the times are 
very bad, and that they suffer this winter very 
much." 

" I don't know about their business. All I do 
is to take care of my own. "What folks lack in 
pennies I make up in hollering ! That's the way 
I does. Sc I sells more papers now than I used 
to. At first I stood on the corners and said noth- 
ing. Then I turned over a new leaf. I began 



How a Newsboy kept the Wolf Away. 205 

to move around. I kept busy, and always did 
my best." 

" What is the result ? " 

" Oh ! its all right. The pennies are there. 
If not in one man's pocket they are in another's ! 
I goes for 'em all. I work a little harder; but 
that is what I'm here for. If I can't sell papers 
to one man, I can to another ; so all I have to do 
is to lind that other man ! Besides, I am study- 
ing economy now. I don't go to the theatres nor 
spend so much time loafing as I did last fall. I 
make almost ten dollars a week selling papers, 
and two dollars a Sunday blacking boots. That 
pays our rent, and mother is not so extravagant 
as she was. Oh ! we get along real well. If we 
had the money father used to spend foolishly 
we'd have more than we have now, but we 
should not be so happy. Besides, it's good for 
me to have something to do. It helps me to 
know how. Some of these days I will be a man, 
and then I will have learned many lessons, and 



206 How a Newsboy Jcept the Wolf Away. 

the best of all will be that I have learned to take 
care of myself and to have no more wants than 
are necessary. You'll never catch me doing as 
father did. He was a good man, but somehow 
or other he M'as always better to some one else 
than to himself. Of course I don't want to say 
anything against my father, for that would not 
be right, but when I am as old as he was, I'll 
have a home. Then I'll care nothing for hard 
times more than I do now. It's only the poor 
and the rich and the old folks and the little 
orphans who need help. We boys can take care 
of ourselves." 

Away went the little fellow, selling papers as 
he ran, after his sermon on the times, which we 
shall not soon forget. 



CHAPTER XXL 



THE MANSION AND THE MAN. 




ilOW busy the builders are this spring ! 
To-day we walked about the city — ■ 
away from the crowded, dirty streets, 
where men work only for gain, and where souls 
are encrusted with a varnish of greed day after 
day, till the mind is warped, and stunted, and 
weakened in all except its grasp for dollars. 
On this street and that we walked, for a long 
way about the great Park where the green grass, 
tlie growing foliage, the millions of flowers, the 
singing of birds, and the laugh of thousands of 
children at play, glorify nature, and make man 
better, as he breathes pure air and good thoughts 



208 The Mansion and the Man. 

into his limgs and heart. We watched the 
builders, and chatted with the workmen. We 
helped them pound the stone, loosen the rocks, 
remove the earth, mix the mortar, lay the brick, 
and build the walls, as here and there we went, 
to see, to learn, to rest from toil at the desk. 

It is good this being a workman. This remov- 
ing of old to build up the new. This leaving 
monuments of stone, brick, iron, and marble, 
that all who ever after pass that way may know 
that earnest man, with the active mind, and a 
willing arm, and a brave heart, and a will to 
work, has given proof that man can do all that 
man has ever done, and much more in addition. 

Then we saw men tearing down little, narrow, 
old and dirty houses. How the wind blew the 
dust away ! How the dirt flew with the breeze, 
and the smudge of the wreck soiled garments for 
a time ! Thus it is with those who tear down 
old rookeries of habitations, or of ideas. They 
raise a dust, and are begrimmed thereby. They 



The Mansion and the Man. 209 

fii-e torn on sharp points, and scratched by nails, 
once good enough, but of no more nse. But glory 
to the ones who tear down the narrow to build up 
the wide ; who demolish narrow walls to sink deep 
the broad foundations on which men can build 
for generations to come. These are the men. 
These are the lieutenants of God — the men who 
on earth build towers by which they rise to work 
with the angels. Surely the palaces are better 
and grander than the hovels. Then let the old 
walls come down and the new foundations be 
laid. Let the huts give way for the stately 
homes, which are but the stepping-stones be- 
tween the caves of the past and the Heavenly 
Temples of the future in the Land of the Leal. 

A few weeks since there came a young man 
to a vacant lot near our home. We saw him 
one morning with a tape-line in his hand. He 
started from a stake driven in the earth and 
walked some distance away. He drew that line as 
taut and straight as line could be drawn. Right 



210 Tlie Mansion and the Man. 

over a vacant lot — over a low place in the earth 
where dirty water had settled, rubbish had been 
thrown and all manner of uncleanliness had 
accumulated, and from whence in the summer 
time went out malaria and poison. In a little 
while there came another man — then another ; 
then other men. All of them workers. They 
began with picks and spades. They loaded carts 
with all manner of old rubbish, and it was carted 
to the dumping ground. They followed the line 
to the east — then to the north, then to the west, 
and then to the south, as a brave warrior for the 
right follows the line of duty. The workmen 
came to the solid rock. It was in their way. 
Then with bars of steel, and sledges of iron in 
the strong arms of industrious men, they beat the 
anvil chorus and drove progression with the drill 
where daylight had never before penetrated. 
Mind directed matter. Bold and well-directed 
strokes told ao-ainst the rocks which had for ao-es 
but waited for all this hardihood and daring of 



The Mansion and the Man. 211 

those who proposed to build up something on a 
firm basis. 

The man with gunpowder came one daj. He 
emptied granulated ingenuity into the holes 
made by the drill. He filled it with hard, gritty 
sand, well packed alongside the line of fuse. 
Explosions followed. The rock was broken. A 
man came one day to find fault. He said the 
noise disturbed him. That what God had made 
a rock must not be broken to be made into a 
wall. He asked what all this meant. The man 
with the line and the plans in his head and hands 
made answer that a mansion was to be erected 
there, and that before it could be done the old 
rubbish must be taken away before the new can 
be built. The work went on. How oft from 
the window of our library have we watched the 
laborers. Starting from the foundation, the}'' 
builded squarely, broadly, and well. From the 
bed-rock they built. Stone upon stone — brick 
upon brick — story after story was gained. Higher 



212 The Mansion and the Man. 

and higher grew the walls, and, as they grew, up 
and still up rose the workmen, as, in the Eternal, 
will rise above the lazy, the idle, the grovelling, 
all who dare be men — builders ; living fingers 
to the hands of God. 

This morning we looked, and the walls were 
all up. A row of fifteen elegant houses — 
mansions of themselves, now mark the spot 
where but a few weeks since was a Golgotha for 
rubbish, a place filled with unclean things. 
The old has passed away. The new has 
arisen. The waste places have been made glad 
by the workmen. The raw material has been 
utilized. The ground so long despised has been 
cleaned away and made valuable. Where was 
but dirt and filth will soon be beautiful liomes, 
standing on sure foundations. The workmen 
will here have homes. Side by side they will 
live in peace, take their rest, enjoy their com- 
forts, and gather strength to build still more. 
Here is a house with many mansions, with no 



The Mansion and the Man. 213 

occasion for tlie occupant of either to quarrel 
one with the other, for where there are untold 
millions of workers there is exclusive honor for 
none, but abundant reward for all. These 
houses will soon be finished. Their floors will 
be laid with carpets. Their walls will be hung 
with pictures. Happy parents and children will 
gather by the fireside, or sit on the porch when 
comes the twilight to talk of home joys and the 
work of the morrow. 

Turn we now from the window and the man- 
sion to the man. Not to the man who is, but 
to the man who will be, to tlie boy who will 
read this, and whom we would see great and 
happy. We know a boy who lives in a smaJl 
house ; who sleeps in a small room ; who has 
a plain home far away from where this home 
chapter is written. This boy's father is a friend 
of ours. Through* evil as well as good report 
he has been a good friend. In dark hours 
lie has stood by us to sustain and encourage, 



214 The Mansion and the Man. 

giving of his good thoughts and kind words that 
sunshine which makes twigs grow to be oaks 
all in good time. AVe cannot well help the 
father, for he does not need help. But as he has 
been a friend to us, so would we be a friend 
to his dear son. So we will draw our chair and 
our desk near the fire and the fender, and this 
to the boy who has come to sit in that easy-chair 
so close by, in love, and desire to do good, 
we say : 

Take a lesson from the builders. Sit with 
us at ease, and let us look into the fire to see 
the coals burning. Let us throw off all the coat- 
ings of bigotry, and prejudice, and selfishness, 
in order to be men. Years ago thei'e came 
a summons to our home, and to her work in the 
Golden Gardens went the spirit of a dear 
mother. That was more than half a lifetime 
since. They told us she was in the church-3-ard, 
but we could not find her. They told us that 
she had gone forever, but we could not believe 



The Mansion and the Man. 215 

it. As the years rolled by to join the past how 
we longed for a mother's love, and her cai-e, and 
good advice, and maternal interest. How much 
would we have given for a friendly counsellor 
who could give advice and point the way 
to a higher and still higher success. When 
came trials, and griefs, and storms, we called 
to her, and called, and lifted up the heart with 
its struggles, till at last she came and pointed 
the way. So, too, would we, without selfishness, 
point the better way to all poor boys who would 
be good men — to all men who would be happier 
and better. It is glorious to build whether 
of mansions or of man. The workmen who 
erected the houses, first lined out, and then 
prepared the grounds. They dug and cut 
to the line of the right. They removed all there 
was of the bad to make room for the good. So, 
too, would we build for manhood. 

Could we but live our life over again, startina: 
from boyhood, how many an error — liow many 



216 The Mansion and the Ma,n. 

mistakes would we try to avoid. Men and boys 
make mistakes. We wonder they do not com- 
mit more. Many a spot in the road of life 
would be avoided. We should try to be more 
brave — more earnest in defence of the right, and 
to protect the weak. There is not a boy but 
who can do better than we have done. There 
is not a man but who can, by beginning at once, 
build himself up to a glorious position. 

First, clear out from the heart all the dirty 
rubbish. Leave off the slang, the vulgarity, the 
words which blacken and soil the mind till 
it throws out malaria, and fever, and poison, 
as do pools of stagnant water. Keep the heart 
pure and the brain active. Study for the best 
and when you have found it, work and study for 
something still better. Never be satisfied with 
one good act — nor a hundred — nor a thousand. 
But add them together one after the other till 
at last you will have a string of pearls to lift you 
higher instead of pebbles to sink you lower. 



The Mansion and the Man. 217 

Hearts, like houses, can be built out. Minds, 
like horaeSp can be beautified. It is as easy 
to plant a noble ambition as to plant sordid 
desires and all those trees which bear but bitter 
fruit. Remember that it is little by little, inch 
by inch, but steadily upward. This is the way 
the work of the man becomes the mansion. 
This is the way the poor boy becomes the great 
man. This is the M^ay the apprentice becomes 
the master — the pupil becomes the teacher, and 
the intelligence of mortals the power and 
unknown greatness of those who are immortal. 
Build your walls of good material and they will 
last. Keep out the rotten sticks and that rub- 
bish which has been thrown away by those who 
have passed along before you. Be kind to the 
poor, for every good act is a plant that will bear 
blossoms to our credit in the beautiful beyond. 

By the hearth and fenders of many homes 
in the country to-night are resting boys, who 

in a few years will be the smartest men in the 
10 



218 The Mansion and the Man. 

land. They will be the workers — the builders, 
the ones who will be great and powerful in 
proportion as they take care of themselves. 
Then let all the boys who read this clear away 
the rubbish and begin building for the glorious 
manhood of the future. That better future 
when it will not be a sin for man to have ideas 
or to express them. That future which will 
be better when men make it so. That future 
which is better opened to the poor than to the 
rich, as work is better than play when men are 
to be made. 

If all the boys in the country would build 
themselves into men in the most glorious accep- 
tation ui. the term, what a country ours would 
be ! Then there would be no more prisons, 
or need for them. No poor-houses, for bad 
habits would not make men paupers. No 
poverty, for all would be thrifty. No armies 
of orphans; no multitudes of drunkards who 
make wives miserable, children wretched, and 



The Mansion and the Man. 219 

mankind a disgrace to humanity. We want 
every boy in the land to become a rich, a good, 
a useful man, and will do our best to help them 
along on the road that leads to peace, to pros- 
perity, and to the mansion there will be for 
every brave, truthful, deserving, honest man in 
that more beautiful land, where are the Gar- 
dens of the Leal in the new life and the better 
home for all of us who would be remembered 
for the good we have done before there comes 
to us on earth the final Saturday Night. 





CHAPTEE XXII. 



PAPA HAS GONE HOME. 




FRIEND has gone to his reward — a 
loving parent has gone home, and the 
tears of sorrow are coursing down 
many a cheek to-night. Yesterday our friend 
was with ns in life — to-night his chair is vacant, 
and he has gone from us till we meet in the 
Golden Gardens. All the day have we been 
thinking — thinking — thinking. A few weeks 
ago, he, who is now gone, sent cheery words to 
ns in a sick-room ; now the curtains are drawn 
in the room where he rests in that beautiful 
silence, which tells that, from a perishable form, 
the genial spirit has gone to the hereafter. 



Papa Has Gone Home. 221 

A father — a loving father and a kind, tender- 
hearted, honest hnsband has gone. He was not 
a Christian, as the world stamps men for appear- 
ance. He belonged to no Church; was no 
sectarian. He never professed more than he 
believed ; he never wore the mask of hypocrisy, 
but was, all in all, a generous, affectionate, reli- 
able man. 

One day we met him in Jiis place of business 
and found him quiet, social, choice of language, 
clean in conversation, and wearing about his 
inner self the mantle of a gentleman. Then we 
met him on the street, at places of amusement, 
at rooms for study, and in the better-ordered 
haimts of men. 

One day we met him in his home. It was on 
a Sabbath. With his wife and little ones he was 
resting. His was no long face, wrinkled by 
cant. He did not make of his little ones prison- 
ers on this blessed day, and chain them to books, 
sermons and commentaries beyond their years 



222 Pajpa Has Gone Home. 

and compreliension. He was ashamed of deceit, 
positive in his mentality, and the loved husband 
and father for years. His life and vitality vs^as 
not sapped by dissipation. His rule was that of 
kindness. He loved his home ones and they 
loved him. He was a plain, honest, natural 
man, who scorned a mean act. 

At home, when he was there, all was hap- 
piness. The loving wife, whose heart is all 
a-bleeding, was happy. She lived for her loves, 
and thus her life ran smoothly. When papa 
spake, the little ones listened and obeyed. 
When any of them were in trouble, father's 
sympathy melted the clouds away. He did not 
leave his little ones to run the streets and inhale 
the poison that is embittering thousands of lives, 
but called them closer, nearer to him day by 
day. He played with them, romped with 
them, taught them, helped them to build 
play-houses and air-castles, till not all the 
tongues that ever talked could make that 



Papa Has Oone Home. 223 

man's children believe there evei' was snch a 
place as home, dear, sweet home. When night 
came, papa came. He read from books and 
papers. He drew pictures on slates and paper. 
He sang songs till all his little ones trooped into 
his heart. He tanght them honor, truth, man- 
hood and love for each other, even as did He 
who was crucified. In all the world this now 
orphaned family of little ones had no such 
fi'iend, save perhaps their loving mother. 

One day papa came home so ill that he could 
not entertain his family. The doctor came and 
said that he was yevy ill. For days the patient 
suffered till pain drove reason and consciousness 
away, and he was insensible. Then it was that 
the loved ones gathered about and did all in 
their power to bring him back to life. But in 
vain. Tears of sorrow and bursts of grief were 
powerless to waken him. 

Kneel by the bed on which he sleeps so still, 



224 PajM Has Gone Home. 

loving wife. Keep not back the torrents of tears 
that attest thy deep sorrow. Open your hearts 
to God and your eyes to the light that floats from 
the summer shore, where now stands he you so 
loved, beckoning you to come to him with all the 
loved ones of his heart. It is good to weep — • 
then let no one check thy sorrow till the heart 
shall be cleared of its bitterness, and you can 
nestle in memories of that beautiful past which 
surely leads to a living, loving future. 

Bid the little ones come. Softly, if they will, " 
but bid them come. Lift them up to see and to 
kiss the pale lips of the father who so loved 
them. Join your tears with theirs ; then, under 
the shadow of tender memory, open your arms 
and fold them to your heart, there to hold them 
till you and they shall part to rest with him who 
has but gone home to await your coming. 

It is not every husband and father who is 
mourned and missed when he is thus at rest. 



Pa^a Has Gone Hotne. 225 

We know husbands who have no kind, encourag- 
ing words for their wives who are mothers; who 
are cold, distant, careless, if not cruel, to their 
children. We know of places called homes, 
whose harsh discipline with continual pimish- 
ment harden children, till the presence of a 
father is hateful and his influence for good is 
gone. We know of husbands who are cold, 
selfish and deceitful, and who will hardly be 
missed or mourned. We know of homes 
made beautiful and of home ones made 
happy by the love, care, kindness and careful 
watchfulness of a father. When such men die 
the world is the loser, but their memories are 
blessed. 'Tis true there is grief at parting, but 
the joy, when comes the meeting in the Land of 
the Leal, will more than compensate the sorrow 
of to-day. Life at best is but a school. We are 
here only to be tested ; to see of what material 
we make ourselves. Those who are weak and 

selfish, careless and neglectful of duty, will 
10* 



226 Pa{pa Has Gone Home. 

amount to no more in the Eternal than here. 
But those who are kind, loving, true to the finer 
principles of manhood, and as anxious to make 
others happy as to be made so, will rise in 
immortality to blessed height, and carry in their 
arms, all in good time, those who mourn when 
comes the call for papa to come Home. 

Open the door and let us in. It is wise and 
well to follow in the track of death lest we for- 
get how to live. The man of the house is asleep. 
The clock has stopped at high twelve. The 
head of the family — the look-out, sentinel, watch- 
man and provider has been called to his second 
l^irth, which, like the" first, pains others more 
than himself. In the prime of life he has gone. 
Let us look at his face and read, even in death, 
the handwriting of God. Ah ! He was an 
honest man. Sit still, ye who are watching. 
He needed no watchers in life ; you are useless 
now that he is gone. 



\ 



Papa Has Gone Home. 227 

Open the window, that the cool air may come 
in. Draw the curtains still closer, that he may 
not be disturbed. Go to your homes and let him 
sleep, for he wakens far beyond you. Step 
lightly, and with sympatliy, to the family room. 
Pray to your good angels to wipe the tears from 
the eyes and face of the widowed one, who with 
her babe on her breast, holds it so close as she 
sobs her grief out in the vain endeavor to sleep. 
Come to the bedside of the little ones who have 
lost so dear a father, and be kind to the or- 
phaned ones whose loss has been so great. 

It is dark now, the clouds are black and full 
of tears. But just beyond them is Eternal light, 
and some of these days you, too, can go to the 
beautiful realms of the Eternal, to rest with the 
husband and father who held the love of his 
home ones so tenderly to this mournful Saturday 
night. 




^^p?"*^^*^ 




fB^aa 






^i^KpSI 




i^'^^lS 


K^ 


^ 


nd 


^^W 


|k 


^^ 


^^ 


^^B 


^^^^ 




^ 




^ 









CHAPTER XXIII. 



MAKING PLAY-HOUSES. 




O-DAY we had such a jolly good visit 
with half a dozen little boj'S and 
girls, whom we found during a ram- 
ble along the river. There was an old house on 
a little hill. Some years ago it was used for a 
tavern, then a portion was torn down and taken 
away, while the remaining part was for three 
or four years occupied as a saloon and sort of 
drinking place, where all manner of rough men 
congregated to have " good times " in telling 
smutty stories, drinking whiskey, fighting over 
cards, and spending their earnings, not to de- 
velop but to debase their manhood. 



Making Play-Houses. 229 

For two years this old building has been 
vacant. The title to the property is in dispute, 
so the children in the neighborhood have taken 
possession of its rooms and have formed several 
little societies for enjoyment. Walking along 
that way we heard merry voices coming from 
the old building, whose doors and windows have 
been stolen away. Looking in one of the rooms 
we saw three little boys and five little girls, 
playing housekeeping. They all quit talking 
and laughing as we stepped in, like children who 
were afraid, — like children who had been scold- 
ed and abused, because they were children, and 
had a God-given right to be happy. 

" Children, what are you doing here ? " 

" Please, sir," replied one of the girls, a bright- 
eyed child of about eight years, " we are doing 
no harm — ^just making play-houses — that is all, 
sir. Must we go out of here ? " 

" Bless your little souls — go out of here ? Not 
if you wish to stay. Children at play are sun- 



230 Making Play-Houses. 

shine for the heart. Play all day — stay here so 
long as you want to, for all of me." 

"Thank you, sir," said three or four of the 
little folks, and the smile came to the faces of all 
of them as they continued their work. 

" What say you, little friends? Once I was a 
little boy, like this bright little fellow here, and 
I know how to j)lay. Let us play together ! " 

" What an idea ! " said two or three of the 
little ones; but soon they all agreed, and we 
had the jolliest visit we have had for many a 
day. 

" Playing housekeeping, are you ? Plow are 
3'ou off for furniture % " 

" Oh, sir, pretty well, but we want more. We 
want more dishes, and more pictures, and more 
other things." 

How natural that was, to want more. We 
looked about the room. The children had swept 
the dirt out, and had a few little boxes, a lot of 
old bricks for chairs, and a number of pieces of 



Making Play-Houses. 231 

broken crockery for dishes, and some pieces of 
colored paper and pictures from newspapers 
pinned to the wall, and seemed quite thrifty. 
All these things had been picked up close about 
the old house, or brought from home. In a little 
while we were all busy as bees. We heljped the 
little girls to fix things just as they wanted them 
fixed, for it was their house, not ours. Then we 
went with the boys along the river bank, farther 
from home than they had ever been before, 
although the river had always been there as 
now, and we found ever so many little things, 
new even if they were very old. Soon we had 
our pockets and arms full of little things. Shell's, 
pretty pieces of stone or rock, a few glass 
bottles, some tin boxes, and pieces of crockery 
even larger and better than the ones they had in 
their play-houses. The little fellows could hard- 
ly believe that there were such things aloug the 
river, and only such a little way from the old 
house, but there thc}^ were, sure enough. Per- 



232 Making Play-Houses. 

haps the fathers and the mothers of these boys 
may not thank us for leading their little ones a 
few blocks from home, but the exercise did them 
good, and they are now ready to go a little way 
by themselves, to find beautiful things. Again, 
the children were alone. One of the boys said 
his father never played with him — never went 
out to walk with him, and that he had been told 
by his father ever so many times that if he went 
along the river to look for playthings, the bears 
would eat him up. The boy has been there now. 
He found the new things. The bears did not 
eat him, for none were there. He thinks his 
father was mistaken, while the father, no doubt, 
will be very mad at us for proving that he has 
all along been telling his boy falsehoods. Per- 
haps the father's father had told him there were 
bears up the river till he had come to believe it. 
But he had no business to tell his boy such stuff 
till he had been there to see for himself. Per- 
liaps bears were along the river a great many 



Making Play-Houses. 233 

3'ears ago, bat when the raih-oad and the steam- 
boat came along, they all ran away. 

To our mind it always seemed wicked to shut 
children np in houses, and keep them in narrow 
rooms, when God gave us all out doors for a 
jilayground, and a Held from which to gather 
beautiful things. 

Well, we took the armfuls of things we 
found to the river, close by the old house. The 
little girls came and helped. We washed the 
dirt from all the things we had picked up ; some 
of the articles were very dirty and required 
a good deal of washing ; some of the things we 
found, as they were washed, proved to be rotten 
or fit for nothing, so we left them alone. 

Then we all went up the hill to the old house, 
which was fresh and clean when it was built, 
but which, from the lives and acts of the money- 
makers who had so misused it, had come to be 
in disgrace and in dispute, so nobody could tell 
who owned it. We had pieces of glass to see 



234 Making Play-Houses. 

through — more and better bricks-^several pieces 
of boards, on which to place little things, lots 
more of dishes, and all sorts of furniture for 
the little friends who were afraid we had come 
to bother them rather than help beautify the 
old house. The old bottles were filled with 
water from the river, instead of the poison 
they once contained, and into them there were 
jilaced flowers, grasses and green twigs gathered 
along the banks, all adding to the beauty of 
the well-swept room, which had been made 
into a play-house. 

Then when the little folks had fixed every- 
thing up nicely, we went a little way off and 
from a very poor old woman sitting in a fence 
corner, where she had a few cakes, three 
oranges, two apjiles and a few sticks of candy ; 
with three dimes we bought all she had and 
took the little store to the play-house. It made 
her old heart very glad to sell all she had for 
sale, and as the deep smile came to her face 



Making Play-Houses. 235 

we knew there was new sunshine in her heart, 
for once at any rate. The little girls set their 
table, and we had such a nice suj^per. Cakes, 
and fruit and candy, cut up and put on the 
little dishes. When we left the old house it 
looked nicer inside than when we went there, 
and none of the little folks were sorry we visited 
them. The boys said they were going a little 
farther up the river the next day, and the girls 
were going with them, and all of them wanted 
us to come again, as they promised to come and 
see us and hear music, and look at pictures, 
and help us to pliay or to rest from labor some 
Saturday night. 




CHAPTEE XXIV. 



THE WILLING WORKEES AND THEIK KEWARD. 




HIS autumn night the wind is piping 
its chilling blasts up and down the 
street as the signs creak their dismal 
warnings that winter is soon to be here. Then 
who will care for the poor ? Who will furnish 
clothes, food, shoes and stockings and comforts 
for all the little ones who are deserted and alone 
in heart ? Pretty soon our little baby will be 
home to fill the house with laughter. Perhaps 
before this chapter will be printed. The cold 
winds on the ocean retard the coming of our 
loved ones, but they will soon be here. Then, as- 
we sit by the fire in the dearly-prized home cor- 



Willing Workers and their Reward. 237 

ner, and rest in tlie sunshine that comes from 
pure and loving hearts, we will think of the poor, 
of the homeless, of the wearj mothers, tired 
fathers, and the little boys and girls in their 
homes all over the country, and will always try to 
live so as to set for them none but good examples. 

To-day we have been made very happy. There 
came a letter a few days since from a young man 
who said he felt as though he must say something. 
That he wished us to come to his house, a few 
miles from the city, and to dine with him and 
his young wife. 

The invitation was accepted. We found him 
in a snug little brown house, surrounded by trees, 
with such an air of home comfort all about him 
that he really was to be envied. 

There were but two rooms besides the kitchen 
in the house, but it was a happy home. The 
monarch of all this was a mechanic. A boiler- 
maker. He is a clever workman, handy with 
tools, and the possessor of good taste. We met 



238 Willing Workers and their Reward. 

his wife, a sweet-faced yonng woman who went 
about her household duties so cheerfully, and who 
seemed like a bit of sunshine from the Golden 
Gardens. 

As we sat by the fire, the young mechanic told 
us his story. "Would you like to hear it ? Then, 
all you little folks, gather your chairs close about 
and listen just a few moments, and hear it you 
shall, as we tell it to you as he told it to us : 

" This is a little home, but it is all our own. 
We live here and are happy. To-day I am twen- 
ty-two years old. I have been married just one 
year. Three years ago I was a lively fellow 
among the boys. I had a trade, and thought that 
was all I needed. I used to drink, go to saloous 
to have a good time and spend money. Where I 
was brought up we had no manner of amusements 
after the work of the day was done, so us boys, 
for there were two of us in the famil}^, acquired 
the habit of going from home. I fell into bad 
company. I then thought it was good, because 



Willing Workers and their Beivard. 239 

it was so jolly. I spent all the money 1 earned, 
learned to drink, to swear, to gamble for money, 
and was weavino- all sorts of bad habits about 
mo. 

" One day 1 was taken sick. My money was 
all gone. I went to the hospital and was sick 
there two weeks. I read a chapter in a newspa- 
per. It told a])oat a man who had wakened from 
a condition like mine, and had come to be a good 
citizen. It did not scold, or censure, or find fault, 
or mark out arbitrary lines, but was just kindly 
human — that was all. It was a ' Saturday Night ' 
chapter, and it was Saturday night I read it, and 
then I cut it ont, put it in my empty pocket-book, 
and began life anew with that as my capital. 

"" That was two years and a half ago. I went 
to work soon as I could, and kept at it. The 
boys wanted me to go out with them and spend 
my earnings just as I used to in having a good 
time, but I told them I could not afford it. X 
read books, studied music, improved my spare 



240 Willing Workers and thevr Seward. 

time, and began to lay up money. You have no 
idea how proud I was when I had five dollars 
ahead ! I felt as rich as a banker. 

" Af tei' I had been saving and careful for six 
months, I met a real good, nice girl, who had no 
bad habits. She was poor. Her father was 
killed in the war, and her mother was a widow 
who took in sewing. The girl helped her. The 
more I saw her the better she seemed to me. At 
last I loved her. We loved each other. We had 
just one hundred dollars a year ago when we 
were married and began to live. It was not 
much, bat it was all ours. 

" Now we have this little house. We ha^ e car- 
pets on the floor of two rooms. We have nine 
pictures on the walls, and nearly fifty books in 
that case of shelves up there which I made. Our 
house is small, but there is no envy; no fear of 
the future ; no doubting each other ; no fretting, 
fault-finding or selfishness in it. We do all we 
can to help each other, and tlie more we live for 



Willing Workers and their Reward. 241 

each other the happier we are. "We have nearly 
a hundred dollars saved, besides these tilings in 
the house. Our rent is paid for the entire year 
till next spring. We never stop to think about 
the times — have no fears for the future of this 
life or the next, but live right along doing the 
best we can all the time. We go to church, 
because it is the duty of every man to properly 
respect society and the religious customs of any 
country. We attend concerts and lectures and 
amusements when the price is not too high. 
Sometimes the prices are so high we cannot 
afford to go. Then we stay at home, read to each 
other, have visitors or go out a little way and a 
little while to visit a few friends we have close 

by- 

" It is not much of a story, but it is a good 

one. Wife and I often talk of you — of that 

pleasant and kindly-worded chapter, and we 

have often said we wondered if the one who 

wrote it would ever know how much good a 
11 



242 Willing Workers and their Reward. 

few kind words have done. So 1 sent for yoii 
to come and dine with us. In the shop, when 
1 told the superintendent that I would invite 
you, he said you would not come ; but you have, 
and I want you to know that we are happy and 
that people can be happy even if they are not 
rich, when their hearts are in the right place. 

" Marriage was my salvation. I have a dear 
good wife, and 1 am not one bit ashamed to tell 
you that I l()\'e her — that we love each other — 
that we think more of each other than of all 
others in the world. We are trying to make our 
little home a bright and a cheerful one. I have 
not been in a saloon since we were married. 
We have pleasant, social games at home, and I 
had rather these books, pictures, cai-pets and 
that organ should be in our house than in the 
house of the man who makes his saloon attractive 
so as to entice men there to spend their earnings. 
We find that this life is what we make it. We 
are helping each other, and the more we do for 



Willing Workers and their Reward. 243 

each other, the better we love each other, and 
thus my wife is leading me to Heaven. Some- 
times I am cross, peevish and weary, and say 
harsh words. Then I am ashamed of myself 
and my lack of manhood. I ask my wife to for- 
give me. She puts her arms around my neck, 
kisses me and forgives what I say, all is sunshine, 
and I try to be better than before. Do j^ou know 
that I have almost conquered myself ? That her 
goodness is making a better man of me than I 
ever thought of being before we were married. 
In a few weeks now — but I will whisper it to 
you, so she will not hear what I say ! Then I 
will be very proud. And we will take good care 
of it, and you see that we have realized that our 
life and other lives are what we make them, as 
they are surrounded by influences for good or for 
evil." 

We remained to dinner, and for an hour after. 
The good wife was proud of her home, of her 
husband. She pointed with pride to what they 



2i4: Willing Workers and their Reward. 

had made, almost from nothing. She told how 
good, and kind, and loving, and genuine in his 
hearty manhood her husband was to her. That 
he was always considerate and the soul of honor 
to his vows in all things, and what a pleasant 
home they would have by-and-by, when taxes 
were lighter, rents lower, and compeusation 
more liberal. In all our travels we never visited 
at a happier home than this cottage of the young 
workers, who, hand in hand, are taking hold of 
life bravely, to help each other, to develop man- 
hood, and at last to enter the gates of the Golden 
Gardens, where is a loving Father to smile on 
and to reward all who are true enough and bold 
enough to live to a purpose, to be true and lov- 
ing to each other and to walk directly on to the 
future, which will be woven there as we pattern 
here, 

Before you little ones, our friends, go to your 
beds this Saturday night, we wish to tell you 
something. Once we were a poor lad, and 



Willing Workers and their Reward. 245 

doubted the future. The greater part of three- 
score years have gone since we first began to look 
at life. We have seen, O ! so many boys and 
girls grow to be men and women, and to fret 
their lives away, that we often wish we had some 
large hall, or some bright field where we could 
invite all the children of the land to come so 
we could talk to them and ask them all to be 
good to themselves. We love children. We 
love the children of the poor. We love the ones 
who have pretty playthings, and those who have 
not. We wish we could fill the laps of all the 
children with playthings, and all souls with sun- 
shine. But this we cannot do. It will not be 
many more of these chapters that we can ever 
write. Only a few more. We feel so often 
of late like one who is standing by his open 
grave. The head is weary — the brain is tired — 
the glimmering lights that dance before our 
eyes, even as we write these lines, tell us that 
the rirer is near. 



24:6 Willing Worhers and theia. Reward. 

it may be that this is the last bit of talk we 
cau ever have with our little friends. We hope 
not, for we love to have them talk with us — to 
have them write to us. But no man can work 
forever. The sunset will come — the blinds must 
be drawn — the lamps must be lit some of these 
days. So before we put down the pen forever, 
we wish to say this to our little friends, the 
children. 

We cannot give to all of you presents, nor 
throw about j^ou that sunshine which at times 
comes all about us like a golden cloud. But 
you can all of you make sunshine for yourselves. 
And this is the way. Be kind to each other. 
Do not be cross and quarrelsome. Be real kind 
to the little ones, and to the poor. Be good to 
poor mannna and papa at all times. Learn to 
wait on yourselves, and then let your little feet 
hasten to wait on those who have suffered, and 
worked for and watched over you all the long 
days and nights of whose incidents you have 



Willing Workers and their Reward. 247 

forgotten. "When you have playthings, take 
care of them. When you have done with them, 
give them to other children smaller than you 
are, whose parents are too poor to bu}- presents 
for their little ones, or to the poor little orphans 
who have no one but Jesus the Christ to love 
them. Be good to all the poor little children 
whose feet wander into strange places, and who 
have none to tell them what to do, so the good 
angels who watch over us will not weep. 

The man of whom we write was once a little 
boy. He grew up in a cold, selfish home. It 
was but natural that he should hunt for a place 
to be happy. The little ducks seek water ; the 
bees seek flowers ; the birds seek branches ; the 
plants seek sunshine, and just so do children 
hunt for that sunlight and those amusements that 
give beauty to the soul. Our friend started on 
the wrong road. He fell by the wayside, and 
when he was sick his eyes rested on kind words 
and he retraced his steps. Then it was that the 



248 Willing Workers and their Reward. 

guardian spirits in the air smiled for joy and 
gathered about him their golden wings. Then it 
was that the love of a sweet, pure, good girl went 
out to meet his, and he began building a home 
— they began to build and to beautify. 

Some of these days all our little friends who 
now read will be men and women. We shall be 
in the Land of the Leal, where work is not 
wearying, and will then visit thousands of homes 
all over the laud to see how do our little friends 
and to impress them with beautiful ideas and 
better resolves. Then they will have friends or 
not, as they choose and select now. They will 
have beds in hospitals or homes of their own, as 
they alone shall determine. If they have good 
homes we ask them to provide playthings, amuse- 
ments and something to interest their children, 
if, like our young friend with whom we dined 
to-day, they shall ever have anything to tell us in 
a whisper. The best way to be good men and 
women is to be good children. Learn to think 



Willing Worlvers and tlieir Reward. 249 

for yourselves. "With cobs a child can build a 
play-house, or nothing, as it wills. So, little 
friends, with the opportunities of life you can 
build yourselves into happy homes or dismal 
prisons — into love or hate — into purity or vice 
— into success or failure — into degradation or 
respectability, into a condition that you will be 
proud or ashamed of, contented or discontented 
with, just as you alone may decide. 

In a little while we shall put the pen aside and 
go to our other room, there to rest. We have 
worked all the week, every day from early morn- 
ing till midnight. We have tried to do no 
wrong — to do what was and is right. During 
the week we have made some one happy, and so 
have all our little friends. In a short time we 
shall seek our couch to rest. Shall sleep to 
dream. Shall waken to a new morn, in this life 
or another, and in that glad, golden Summer 
Land shall find flowers growing on the vines we 

have planted in this life, just as our young friend 
11* 



250 Willing Workers and their Reward. 

finds awaiting him the cheerful home, the warm 
kiss, the trusting love, the soul feast and heart 
reward there always is in the home he has made 
where is the good angel who welcomes his 
coming. 

Pretty soon we shall go home. Our loved 
ones will be with us and we shall be with them. 
In that golden land we shall all rest, and then 
how glad we will feel to welcome all the weary 
workers and all the hungry souls who may or 
may not read this brief sketch of our visit to 
those .who by work and love have made tlieir 
home such a resting place and glad retreat as we 
found, and of which we quit writing to ask God 
and the good angels to bless them, and all others 
who are true, good and loving, this and every 
other Saturday night. 





CHAPTER XXY. 

OUK BEAUTIFUL DAELINGS. 

[O-NIGHT there is a picture of the 
mellowest beauty before us, and if 
our little friends will leave their 
fathers' necks and the arms and breasts of their 
darling mothers for a little while, and come and 
sit all about us, on the sofas, in the chairs, on 
our knees, or clamber up on our shoulders so we 
can feel their innocent presence and rest in their 
childi-sh love, we will tell them of two little dar- 
lings. 

At the house of a friend in one of the great 
cities of the West, we are honored as a visitor. 
At the home of a man who has battled with the 



252 Ov/t Beautiful Darlings. 

world and thus far has come out a winner. His 
home is not a cabin, a hovel, or a garret, but 
a place of rest. On the floors are carpets of 
beautiful patterns. On the walls a profusion 
of beautiful pictures. All about the room, from 
where stands the piano, to the corners where are 
various articles of bijoutry and virtu, is order, 
neatness, beautiful groupings, and evidences of 
the presence of the best of angels God ever 
called to life on earth, a home-loving, home- 
beautifying, home-heavening woman ; a loving, 
large-hearted, beautiful wife, who loves her 
babies even as He, who is Our Father, loves His 
children. 

Here is a place where we have found rest. A 
generous welcome never to be forgotten. Kind 
words for duty well attempted in the years of 
otK? past. Earnest encouragement for the greater 
'•-ork of the future. Hearts filled with sympathy 
for one who would do good to all, with the reviv- 
ing sympathy which, sweetly given, throws about 



Our Beautiful Darlings. 253 

the soul such a mellow halo of strength that in 
the great object of life it can never know the 
meaning of that word fail. Here in this home 
we have rested till we are indeed loth to leave 
its enticing atmosphere. To-night we sat think- 
ing of our home, and if it is as beautiful as this. 
We were thinking of \h& poor homes all over the 
land. Of the places called homes, where men 
are cold, careless, unloving, far from generous, 
ignorant of the first and greatest of all duties of 
husband or father. Of homes where men are 
selfish, imperious in their demands of wife and 
children — of homes where coarseness, brutality, 
indiiference, and other entailments of dissipation 
and of ignorance are the skeletons a starving 
wife must touch on every side as she walks 
through life, a prisoner to an unappreciative 
husband, looking for no happiness save in death. 
How many such homes there are. And to 
think of them ! That in their places, all over the 
land, are men who would be so good and of so 



254: Our Beautiful Darlings. 

much use to God in His work of creation, if thej 
would only keep coming up higher and away 
from their selfishness. That in their homes 
wives suffer untold miseries, as their lives are 
worn threadbare by excessive toil, as their hus- 
band fails to provide for the wants of the one 
who is giving her life to him, or for the little 
souls that follow on the vine to fade, wilt and be 
lost before they expand to intelligence, or grow 
into living temples of manly, womanly beauty, 
if Papa, Father^ Helper, is not good and kind 
to them as he should be. 

How many homes there are where the fearful 
curse of drunkenness has come with its sly, 
destroying influence to mar and to scar ; to blight 
and to deaden beautiful li's'es. How many there 
are where men are unfed, and their inner hun- 
gerings are so unresponded to that life is to them 
a torture unbearable, save for the whisperings of 
ambition for place or gain, which in time beats 
down the truly beautiful that there is in the 



Our Beautiful Da/rlings. 255 

nature of every man, to bloom and to blossom if 
he can only have wifely help to develop it. 

How many homes there are where beautiful 
women are dying because of their heart burdens ! 
Dying over their work ! Dj^ng under their 
tasks ! Dying as they are struggling to build 
themselves into conditions of happiness ! Dying 
for want of love, appreciation, attention, and 
that beautiful responsiveness which woman needs 
to iill her soul with that life which is heavenly in 
its magnetism ^ glorious in its enjoying, and so 
^protecting to him who gives and to her who 
receives. 

Ah, well! The world is full of sad pictures 
— of unfurnished homes — of men who do not 
perhaps because they cannot think their way 
clear. Of men who do not know how to enjoy 
life. Of men who have long since forgotten 
how to be lovers. Of women who have been 
broken and bankrupted in heart, soul, life, and 
all that wonderful ehisticity which, once lost, is 



256 Our Beautiful Darlings. 

so quickly followed by physical and mental dead- 
ness. Of places where little children are com- 
ing np to years of wonderment with no love, 
no care, no happifying, beautifying influences 
closely surrounding them. Of places where the 
dearest treasures of earth are being sacrificed on 
the altars of neglect and indifference. When 
we see a beautiful home, we think of those that 
are unfurnished. "When we see careless men, we 
think of those who are kind and loving. When 
we think of women who live only for fashion, 
shirking all the responsibility of life, we pray : 
" Father, forgive them, for they know not how 
surely they are driving all love from their lives." 
This night we have rested. The fire burns 
cheerily in the grate. We sit in an easy chair 
and take comfort. We look over the books on 
the centre table to glance at writings of prose 
and poetry. We look upon the deftly wired 
cages wherein are golden feathered songsters, 
their little heads hidden under their wings, even 



Our Beautiful Darlings. 257 

as we would fain lay onrs in some place where 
sleep would follow so tenderly to give us strength 
for the morrow, its trials and its duties. 

A beautiful woman enters the room. The 
merry laugh of her manly husband is heard 
as it fills the air with echoes of welcome. The 
woman sits at the piano like a queen. Her 
fingers touch the keys lightly, gracefully, 
rapidly. The music leaps, springs, dances, 
bursts out laughingly, like clear rivulets warmed 
by the vernal sun. The piano responds to her 
magic touch and gives forth tune after tune — 
delicious music. 

Oh ! how much there is in knowing how 
to play ! How to make music ! How to fill life 
with beautiftil tones and echoes. How to keep 
in tune and draw music from the heart. Would 
to God all men and all women were such musi- 
cians. 

Now we listen to a waltz and then to the airs 
so loved and so heart-fiUino- in the lono- aeco. 



258 Our Beautiful Darlings. 

The husband, who loves this beautiful woman, 
looks, as he should, proudly on her, as she sits 
to this delectation. The door is thrown a little 
more open, and here come two little darlings, 
two beautiful children, two little girls, the eldest 
not yet six years of age, clad in white, their hair 
in long curls floating so gracefully over their 
shoulders, their little pink feet in living, beau- 
tiful contrast to the rich brown of the carpet 
on which they stand. They seem like whispers 
from some fairy land — like two angels resting 
upon the lives of those who love them, as did 
the dove rest upon the head of Him who so 
suffered in the time agone — who suffered even 
as do men and women who are not understood. 

Hush ! Look there ! Listen ! They kneel 
at the feet of the beautiful woman who is their 
mother. Side by side they kneel to rest their 
little elbows on her knees. They fold their 
little hands together and lift their faces to 
receive the baptism of life from the eyes of her 



Our Beautiful Darlings. 259 

who loves them so. How still is the room ! 
The birds in the cages under the gas burners 
actually start. The change from music to 
silence is so sudden they waken to pay tribute 
to love's devotion. Now comes from two pair 
of little lips this beautiful whisper that goes 
to the heart of God : 

" Now I lay me down to sleep, 
I pray the Lord my soul to keep ; 
If I should die before I wake, 
I pray the Lord my soul to take. — Amen." 

' ' God bless my dear papa. God bless my sweet, loving 
uiamma. God bless our friends who love us, and keep us 
two good little girls. — AmenP 

Then the little ones rose to their feet, kissei^ 
their mamma a sweet good-night, and hand in 
hand moved like little fairies from the room, 
leaving a picture we can never forget. A heart- 
graven picture of two little white-robed darlings, 
at their evening prayer, with the deep, dark, 



260 Our Beautiful Darlings. 

full, life-speaking eyes of a beautiful mother 
beaming down upon them there in the hushed 
stillness of a home sinking to rest this blessed 
autumn evening. 

How could we help saying in all earnest 
beseechment— God bless the little darlings — 
God bless the mother of such babes and fill her 
bosom with that love, that peace, that Heaven- 
boi'u happiness that surely is in store for her — 
for all who live, love and realize that the 
highest, holiest work which woman can ever 
be engaged in is the lovely leading of the 
treasures God gives to us, from the entrance 
to life to the gardens of the eternal, pure, spot- 
less and in the line of the truly womanly ? 

Said a Roman emperor to a visiting monarch 
who one day, after a brilliant review of troops, 
asked : 

" From whence such soldiers ? " 

" Look there on the right. Behold the mothers 

of Home ! " — THE SISTEKS OF GoD ! 



Our Beautiful Darlings. 261 

In the olden time, before men went crazy for 
■wealth, and mothers went wild in the follow- 
ing of frivolous fashion, men were men and 
^ooinen were women. And thus went on, and 
on, the Heaven-inspired work of humanity. 
We looked into the face of England's Queen 
one day to contemplate royalty. We saw her 
greatest crown that was hidden from thoughtless 
eyes — that of motherhood. We have looked 
upon Emperors, Princes, Kings and Presidents, 
but none of them are invested with such sacred 
greatness as is resplendent from tlie true, the 
loving, the beautiful woman about whose life 
God has drawn the holy jjrotecting net-work 
of maternity. Men talk of Heaven ! Wliy, 
in all the angel world is no sweeter picture than 
the one our eyes have this night seen, and to 
which our soul mellows in contemplation. A 
mother who teaches her little darlings to walk 
the rainbow of faith that leads to Heaven ! A 
mother who in all her beauty as a woman is as 



262 Our Beautiful Darlings. 

nothing compared to her beauty, her strength, 
her devotion as a motlier. 

Often, O ! how often have we mourned that we 
were in the first year of life left an orphan, but 
never till now has the great bereavement so fully 
broke in upon our heart. Would to God that 
oui's was omnipotent power! How soon, how 
tenderly, how positively, how warmingly would 
we draw a circle of loving protection from 
all that pains, all that wounds, all that saddens, 
all that weakens, about this mother — about every 
mother in the land. How we would protect 
them from men who ai-e cold, careless, selfish, 
thoughtless. How we would build walls of fate 
between mothers who are overworked, and 
abused, and the M-recks of humanity from whoso 
lives the light of love's early promises has gone 
out in dissipation, to protect them from those 
who forget that to mothers, more than to fathers, 
the nation is indebted for her truest greatness. 

It is for man to go out into the world, to give 



Our Beautiful Darlings. 263 

battle to tlie enemies of his country. To snbdiie 
forests. To build homes. To accumulate. It is 
for woman to regulate, to be queen of the home, 
to stand even closer to God and to heaven than 
man ever could stand — to be mothers, and to 
teach precious treasures to i-est by a mothei-'s 
knee and to reach heaven through faith, love and 
prayer, even as teaches the mother the little dar- 
lings of wliora we write. 

Men may think us queer to thus write from 
the heart, but we care not what the}^ think, 
especially if they do not think. Tlie ballot, the 
hustings, the feverish excitement that comes 
from midnight vigils over a sleeping people, is 
not for women. It is bad enough that men have 
to thus dash their brains full into insanity. Tlie 
place for woman is in her home. She should 
have love, attention, devotion and that velvety 
touching of a husband who is devoted to her — 
should be the mother of children and not the 
murderer of innocents unborn. She should be 



261 Our Beautiful Darlings. 

cared for, and while a wife and mother should be 
let alone in all save the attention that devotion 
mutually prompts, and then her children will be 
great. " These are my jewels/' God loves all 
W'ho wear their jewels properly. 

Some of these days the hand that guides our 
pen to its tracing of words will be still. Before 
lono; oxir work will be done. It is so wearving 
and so wearing upon life to M'ork, work, work I 
We care not to accumulate wealth. We care 
nothing for political place, position, or power. 
!Rone of these couut to us here or in Heaven. 
We would give all the world for a beautiful, 
happy home. For that love that comes from the 
heart of a true, trusting, confiding woman who is 
a loving mother as well as a devoted wife. In 
that and in these is Heaven, and this Heaven is, 
thank God, within our reach. 

While others seek happiness where it is not to 
be found, we la}^ aside the pen — we forget all of 
politics and all love save that which makes men 



Out Beautiful Darliitigs. 265 

heroic — which makes them ever gentle, sweet, 
caressing and husbandly to their wives, and seek 
our rest to dream of the beautiful picture we 
have seen. 

The noise on the street makes us to shudder. 
There are loud, angry, maudlin voices upon the 
street. There are abroad at this nearing of mid- 
night men who are going to their homes with 
hands all hard ; with tongues thickened by 
poison ; with breath laden with offence. They 
are going to break in upon the sacredness of 
home ; to waken their little ones from slumber ; 
to torture the wife who has waited, waited, 
waited till we wonder she has not died by 
suicide ! We shrink from such men, and yet we 
love all who are in distress. Now that our 
chapter is written, we will turn down the light, 
prepare for sleej), and with the dear little chil- 
dren who kneel by the knees of their mother, with 
eyes uplifted in thankfulness for good examples, 

whisper to her and to Our Father this our prayer : 
12 



266 Our Beautiful Darlings. 

" Now I lay me down to sleep, 
I pray the Lord my soul to keep ; 
And if "i should die before I wake, 
I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.''^ 

God bless the good papa. God bless the dear 
good ma-mma who loves ber darlings. God bless 
those for whom this is written, and who understand 
how to live and to love, from this never to be 
forgotten Saturday Night. 




CHAPTEE XXYI. 



FIVE LITTLE CHICKENS. 




E brough.t them in this morning in 
a basket. Five little chickens just 
from their shells. Wlien the baby 
saw the dear little things and heard them talk 
in their baby-chicken way, she clapped her 
little hands and laughed never so hard before 
with delight. 

This chapter will be about the five little 
chickens. It will be for our little friends, the 
boys and girls, who may care to sit and hear 
what a well-msher has to say to them. It 
is not for papa or mamma ; for any of the grown- 
VL]) folks, but for the little boys and the little 



268 Five Little ChicTcens. 

girls who soon will be good men and women, 
and help to make this world and all who are 
in it happier and better, even as the pretty 
chickens made our blue-eyed baby so happy 
to-day. 

A few weeks ago the man came in from the 
cold barn and said that one of the hens had 
a nest in a manger. That in her nest were 
thirteen eggs, and that the old hen wanted to 
sit on the eggs in our manger, as they do in the 
barns and mangers all over the countiy. Out 
to the barn we went to see the nest and the hen. 
Sure enough, there they were, as the man had 
told us. "We counted the eggs and there were 
thirteen. We tucked the hen very nicely in her 
nest, as mamma tucks her little baby away to 
sleep till morning, and then came in the house 
to tell what had been done and to promise thir- 
teen chickens in twenty-one days. 

The next day the man came in and said he 
had found another nest ; that another hen 



Five Little Chickens. 269 

wanted to sit on fifteen eggs. Then we counted 
upon the time when there would be fifteen 
chickens more, and began to look for their com- 
ing. Two or three days ago the man came in and 
told us that one night, (when nobody was looking, 
and faithful old Jack — and he is the watch dog 
who barks at nights and wakens the baby, was 
away from his post,) a skunk, or fox, or rats, 
or something had got into the nest and eaten the 
fifteen eggs. 

The other hen was up high in a box. Rats 
could not get at her, and this morning the man, 
on going to her nest, found the five little chickens, 
for fear they would be hurt in among the broken 
shells, he took them. out very carefully, placed 
them in a little basket, brought them into the 
house, and we all had a jolly time looking at the 
pretty little things. 

One of them was white, or nearly so. One 
was a pretty yellow. One was black as ink, and 
just as cunning as any little chicken we ever saw. 



270 Five Little Chickens. 

Another one was brown, while the other was 
spotted. But they were all little chickens to- 
gether. We placed them by the fire where 
they could be kept warm. Pretty soon, when we 
went out to see about a coop for them, there was 
the old hen off the nest and running all about 
the barn and saying, " cluck, cluck, cluck," loud 
as she could. She was mourning because her 
little babies had been taken away from the place 
where they were born, and she thought they were 
lost. 

We prepared the coop and then pat the five 
chickens therein. When the mother found them, 
she ran in to her new home, called her babies 
under her wings and was very quiet. We 
stroked the feathei-s on her neck and back as she 
turned her head and gave us a look which seemed 
to say — " forgive me for worrying so, but I did 
not know what had become of my babies." 

When we looked at her nest, lo, and behold 
the other eggs were spoiled. It must be that 



Five Little Chickens. 271 

they were not good. Perhaps they had no germ 
in them. Maybe that she did not turn them 
every day as she should have done, so they would 
have been kept uniformly warm. The broken 
shells from which the five chickens had come 
were in the nest, and it was better that they were 
removed as the kind man had done. 

Now their mother is with and very proud of 
them. She is kind to them, picks the food to 
pieces for them, and when they are cold she 
tucks them in under her warm feathers and 
wings as good mammas and good papas see that 
their precious babies, the dear little boys and 
girls, are kept in food and in nice homes, so they 
will grow and develop into men and women with 
minds of their own, and to that manhood wliich 
in its independence is proof of the childhood of 
God. 

We said the children were not alike. But 
they are all of the same family. Each has a 
little individuality of its own. They are like 



272 Five Little Chickens. 

brothers and sisters for all they come from 
different eggs or different worlds. 

It must have been very dark in the shell. Is 
it not curious \ The Qgg^ with its yolk and its 
white, after being turned and warmed for just so 
long a time, becomes a chicken. Now these 
little chicks, with their bright eyes, soft down, 
little bills and baby-like chirp, are nothing like 
eggs. Suppose the q^q^ had talked and fretted 
for fear it would never become a chicken ! What 
a foolish Qg^ it would have been ! Suppose the 
hen had said — "I don't see how this Qg^ can 
ever be a chicken. I cannot see it change and 
grow, therefore I will not believe in the change 
nor sit on the eggs." Suppose the chicken, all 
the time it was in the shell, had cried and 
scratched its eyes for fear of dying or emei-ging 
from the shell which had been its home. What 
a simple little chick it would have been. 

How many of our little friends will ever in 
after life- think of these five chickens % How 



JFive Little Chickens. 278 

many of them will also remember this. All of 

this life in which we are is but an Q^'g shell. It 

will be broken some day and crumble away. 

The grave is dark. Life in the shell is dark. 

But we shall all grow and force our way through 

into a broader existence. The great big world 

into which these five chickens came is ever so 

much larger than was their nest. The hand 

which held them in their basket is larger than 

their entire former home. Death did not treat 

them unkindly after all. He only brought them 

to us to be cared for. Then we found a nice 

home for the little fellows, and called their 

mother to come. Just think ! Yesterday we 

had no chickens — to-day the great change has 

come. We knew of it from the first, but the 

chickens did not. We knew if the eggs were 

good — -if each had a proper germ — if the nest 

was warm and the old hen knew her business, 

we should have chickens in time. Now they 

have a nice house and can run all about. The 
12* 



274: Five Little Chichens. 

egg could not move before, but the chickens can 
run into the garden, out under the trees, along 
the fences, in among the beautiful flowers — to 
thousands of places, they as eggs or as chick- 
ens before the shell was broken, never thought 
of. 

Had the watch-dog done his duty he would 
have driven the skunk or the fox or the rats 
away from the barn, and they could not have 
got ill to destroy the eggs. Watch-dogs should 
always be on hand to speak out. Had all the 
eggs in the other nest been properly turned 
there might have been more chickens, and our 
little baby might have laughed the harder. 

Some of these days all the boys and girls — all 
the men and women will be out of their shells. 
Death will take us kindly from the little box to 
the Home Corner, where we shall be cared for, 
fed and protected. Then we shall grow. Then 
we will be out of the dark. Then we will be able 
to run and to fly — to go like the wind in com- 



Five Little Chiehens. 275 

parison to present speed. Then the mothers 
who mourned on earth for their babies will find 
them all safe and with a loving Father. Then 
what a joyful meeting we will have. We shall 
meet with all the little boys and girls — with all 
the good friends who are so kind to us here in 
our narrow homes, where in comparison to the 
hereafter, all is dark and close about us. 

Sometimes the eggs do not hatch, as they call 
it. Sometimes the egg becomes wet, or rests in 
a low place on the ground. Then its germ is 
killed and nothing comes from it but the bad. 
Just so with little boys and girls — with men 
and women. Sometimes low habits, dissipation, 
envy, malice, ugliness, disobedience, and resting 
of the heart or soul with evil companions, kill 
out the germ of life ; and Death, when he cleans 
out the nests, will have nothing to save in his 
basket — nothing to take to the Master in the 
house, but something to throw away. 

We ask the little children for whom we have 



276 Five Little Chickens. 

written this chapter to see how good they can be. 
To see how pure and loving they can live. Then 
they will have nothing to fear. Death will be a 
good angel who will bear them from the dark to 
the light, where there will be no cold, nor sorrow, 
nor danger, but where children of a common 
heritage will meet and work on to reach their 
destiny ; to occupy the temple each one of us 
shall plan in this life to be occupied in the next, 
when we shall have broken the shell, and opened 
our eyes to the wide and lasting field of beauty 
we are so positive there is for us beyond our 
final Saturday Night. 




iinmniit'iniitiiim.rt 
iKMiiiMiiimiiiiitiKj 



■lliUffliiii 

015 871 422 A 



iiiudiyiiiiii'i 

ilCiKliiiiuiliii 

yiti'O/fitdi 

■fiMiiyt'iui 

t.l'CtHtiiin 



